HOBBS: Rushes to Judgment

Formula 1

HOBBS: Rushes to Judgment

Hobbs muses on the controversy surrounding Lewis Hamilton, and his own futile efforts to impress Colin Chapman.

David Hobbs | Posted October 18, 2008 Charlotte, N.C.

"News just in – people have been pushed wide at the first corner at practically every race there has ever been." (LAT photo)

I think all this controversy over Lewis Hamilton’s driving standards has been a bit overblown.

By and large I think he has shown extraordinary skill, although his starts still leave something to be desired. He has had two or three races that were absolutely outstanding, the standouts being Silverstone in the rain and Hockenheim, when McLaren erred by not bringing him in immediately when the Safety Car came out. Overalls his highs far outweigh his lows, and he’s still only done something like 32 races, so he’s still a child compared even to Felipe Massa, who is already getting up there in terms of experience.

The only two moves I really took issue with were in Italy, when Hamilton overtook Alonso and Webber. He was a bit aggressive in both instances, especially with Webber, forcing him onto the grass at the chicane. As for the incident at turn 1 in Japan…yeah OK, he outbraked himself, but he didn’t hit anybody. Kimi Raikkonen gave him a bit of room, and if anybody made a mistake it was Heikki Kovalainen, who ran into the side of the Ferrari.

Further back in the field, Kazuki Nakajima clipped David Coulthard in the midfield, and none of them got any sanction, but somehow they penalized Hamilton for pushing people wide at turn 1. News just in – people have been pushed wide at the first corner at practically every race there has ever been.

Other places where they sanctioned him include France, where he overtook Vettel at that fast sweep, and ran over the “grasscrete”, straightlining the chicane as a consequence. I didn’t think that was excessive, either, and these were all what you would normally call racing incidents. Quite simply, I think the officialdom this year has gone a bit overboard.

His rivals have been stoking up the pressure on Hamilton recently in the media to try and make him crack. Obviously last year he did crack, a week after putting on one of the all-time great drives to win in Japan. Fuji 2007 was one of the greatest virtuoso performances that I’ve ever seen, especially considering it was only the 15th race of his F1 career.

This is part of the reason the drivers are down on him right now, and it is the same reason they were down on Michael Schumacher, because both were able to waltz in and show them how to do it. In time, this same thing will happen to Sebastian Vettel, F1’s current blue-eyed boy, whom everybody says is such a nice kid.

I tell you what, though, when he gets in a good car and starts beating people up, they won’t like him so much then. People in the established hierarchy just don’t like it when somebody comes along and starts splitting them asunder. That’s exactly what happened in 2007 with Hamilton and Alonso, to the point where it really pissed Alonso off.

Tension between drivers is nothing new, and it even happened to me when I drove with Richard Attwood in the Midland Racing Partnership, because it was owned privately by a bunch of guys to whom Richard was a hero.

They had asked me to join the team, and on several occasions I went quicker than him, even though they felt it was Richard’s team and he should be quicker. It was not dissimilar to what Hamilton is experiencing now, as Attwood’s friends, who owned the other cars, didn’t like it. However, he went onto win the Monte-Carlo Formula Junior race and raced in Formula 1 the year afterwards, so all was assuaged, but there was definitely an undercurrent there.

We’ve seen this all before. People didn’t like Ayrton Senna when he came in; they thought he was a bit dangerous and so on, and they thought the same of Schumacher when he arrived on the scene. Sometimes drivers can acquire a reputation that they do not necessarily deserve, and it can influence their career path.

At the time I was driving that Formula Junior for MRP in the mid-1960s, I was desperate to drive a Lotus, because they had the best car. Unfortunately, every time Colin Chapman came to a race I seemed to get involved in incidents. It irritated me no end that Colin therefore thought I was a crasher, as one of the signatures of my career was that I didn’t have many accidents.

I had wanted to drive for him instead of Mike Spence, who I thought wasn’t as quick as me based on a couple of occasions where we drove the same car for Lotus and I outpaced him. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I might ultimately have ended up behind the wheel of the Lotus Indy car that Mike Spence was driving when he was killed, so maybe it was a good thing that Colin didn’t like me all that much.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, SPEED, or Haymarket Worldwide

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Hobbs

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