Raikkonen win shows F1 title race will be hard- fought
The Australian Grand Prix on Sunday showed that the 2013 season will not be a runaway success for Red Bull, like it was last year. That’s as much an enticing prospect for Formula One fans from across the world as it is for Fernando Alonso, who lost the title in the second half of the season last year.
It’s good for the sport that Lotus have shown potential too with a win, Kimi Raikkonen proving he still has a lot of racing left in him.
Lewis Hamilton made a “positive” start to his stint with Mercedes with a fifth place finish which the former world champion himself admitted was better than expected. What’s more, the race even brought probably the first piece of good news for Indian businessman Vijay Mallya in a long time with Force India racing to 10 points with credible finishes from Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta.
But the shocking revelation at Albert Park was McLaren, who were about two seconds off the pace, and that by no stretch of imagination is to be expected from a team who have been in the mix at the top in the last few years. Jenson Button, who finished a disappointing tenth and ninth in the qualifying and race respectively, was very critical of the car. His new team mate Sergio Perez finished 11th.
“Everybody is a bit down today. A team like this is so used to winning. I went to the Paddock Club to say hello and everyone was saying, ‘What is going on? You are 10th on the grid.’ I was saying we were happy with that because we know it was the best we could do. There was shock around the place. But we haven’t given up,” Button said after the race.
Did Hamilton also get a premonition about McLaren’s car a la the Spanish man who tweeted just before Pope Benedict’s unexpected resignation that he saw a dream that the pontiff will resign and the next Pope will be called Pope Francis I? Funny ways of the world.
Times’ ‘nightmare’
London’s Times newspaper has admitted it badly goofed up by publishing a “story” about Qatar launching a mega “Dream Football League”.
Calling it a “journalistic nightmare” it nevertheless patted itself on the back for being “bold” enough to admit the report was indeed based on a spoof by Les Cahiers du Football a few days ago. Indeed, what choice did The Times have?
Despite the Qatar Football Association swiftly distancing itself from the story, the Times stuck to its guns for a few days before an internal investigation revealed that it had been conned.
But the damage has been done. The Times and the British press went to ridiculous lengths to tarnish Qatar’s successful 2022 World Cup bid. Some of the jibes at Qatar bordered on racism, even though Britain was bidding for the 2018 World Cup which Russia won. Even jealousy has its limits.