In a sensational accusation Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso has gone onto say that the result of this weekend’s European Grand Prix was fixed. He was ofcourse referring to the Lewis Hamilton incident with the safety car which saw the Brit illegally overtake the safety car to get a better position.

On lap 10 after pitting Hamilton came out from the pits just behind the Safety car which had been deployed after Mark Webber’s accident. Fernando Alonso was right behind. While Alonso respected the rules, Hamilton quickly overtook the safety car. the end result was that despite being a few meters from each other Lewis Hamilton came 2nd and Feranndo Alonso came 9th at the end of the race.

A drive through penalty was given to Lewis Hamilton, but with the super short pit-lane at Valencia it was in consequential to say the least.

Fernando’s outburst seems justified especially at the deliberate rule breakage by Lewis Hamilton, it seems he twisted the rule into his favour being well aware that a drive through penalty wouldnt affect him a lot if he was able to overtake the safety car. Also the penalty came too little too late according to most observers and in the end Hamilton was able to get mileage by breaking the rules and was able to finish in a better position.

‘All the kids in the stands know that you cannot pass the safety car. When the safety car came out I was one metre behind Hamilton. I finished ninth; he finished second. I respected the rule: he didn’t.’

‘I think 20 laps to see the replay is long.’

“But here, when you do the normal thing, which is respecting the rules, you finish ninth, and the one who doesn’t respect them finishes second.”

Lewis Hamilton put up a meek defence :

“As I was coming around turn one, literally as I got to the safety car line I saw the safety car was pretty much alongside me.”

“I thought that I’d passed it so I continued and that was it.”

Meanwhile Ferrari in a statement opined on the incident :

A scandal – that’s the opinion of so many fans and experts involved in the sport, who are all in agreement

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo released the following statement:

“The result of yesterday’s race was misrepresentative. Ferrari, which showed itself to be competitive in the European Grand Prix, paid a price that was too high for respecting the rules. Meanwhile those who didn’t follow the rules were penalised by the race officials in a way that was less severe than the damage suffered by those who did respect them.

That is a very serious and unacceptable event that creates dangerous precedents, throwing a shadow over the credibility of Formula One. We are sure that the FIA will fully analyse what happened, taking the consequent necessary decisions. Ferrari will watch this with interest.”

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button also came close to colliding at last week’s Turkish Grand Prix, however their incident was thoroughly overshadowed by the one involving the two Red Bulls of Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber.

As Red Bull PR went into damage control by releasing what seem like canned and cooked up interviews, the McLaren PR seems to have gone into lets take advantage mode. McLaren PR again came out with quotes in which Lewis Hamilton professes his love for Jenson Button. This could also be damage control for a radio conversation that came out on formula 1’s official website.

The conversation goes something like :

After Lewis Hamilton was asked to conserve fuel

Lewis Hamilton says “Jenson’s closing on me you guys”

and asks his team “If I back off , is Jenson going to pass me or not?”

The voice from McLaren replies “No Lewis, no”.

Its another matter than Jenson Button did overtake Lewis Hamilton, Hamilton later regained the lead.

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Read ahead for the quotes :

“Jenson and I both want to win, but not in an aggressive manner. The fighting won’t happen with me and Jenson,”Lewis Hamilton  was quoted

“We got a one-two in Turkey and it was a professional drive from two team-mates. You couldn’t ask for more from a partnership. We are both world champions, we’re both professionals and we both have a huge amount of respect for each other,” he added.

“When I win he is happy for me and vice-versa. Jenson is a great bloke, a very supportive team-mate and he is doing a solid job. It works both ways. I have no doubts that the rest of the season will be the exactly the same,” Lewis Hamilton added

What a mutual admiration society , I can already predict similar quotes from Jenson Button within the next month.

“We told you so” would be such an understatement , anyway British formula one driver Lewis Hamilton has been charged by the Aussie authorities for doing stunts on public roads. The Melbourne police has charged him with doing a burnout and a fishtail stunt in March at the time of the Australian Grand Prix.

After the incident, his Mercedes Saloon was impounded by the Aussie police.

Anyway he has been asked to appear three days before the Belgian Grand Prix, he is a Swiss resident so technically he doesn’t have to appear, but he wants to enter Australia again for next year’s race, we will keep you posted about his progress and how much he is fined by the Aussie police and authorities.

Steinmetz Diamonds on the McLarens  –

This is a tradition isnt it, diamonds shall be encrusted on F1 car steerings and F1 helmets of the McLaren drivers. This year they have encrusted the actual years of the championships which Lewis Hamilton and Jenson button have won. They chose 08 and 09 instead of 2008 and 2009 (smart people ).

I still remember that they had once made an ice formula one car for Kimi Raikkonen to go with his image of the iceman. Unfortunately for the diamond company, neither Lewis Hamilton nor Jenson Button exhibit that kind of charisma.

Here are the diamonds for your pure visual pleasure :

Its interesting to note, that Hamilton is not using this helmet till now.

Lewis Hamilton is a queer-queer character. One day he makes a provocative and stupid statement and the next day his super large PR team is out to make him look like a good boy. Some Brits found it fascinating , I find it highly arrogant, but hey I am not British , so who am I to judge Lewis Hamilton and his comments on an Italian team’s former world champion who is German.

I don’t know what it is with the British Press which covers motorsport and formula one. The fact that no British driver could ever get close to the kind of legacy Michael Schumacher has kind of breeds a little discontent and the British media take advantage of this and start mudslinging on Michael Schumacher in the hopes of selling more copies of their newspaper or more hits on their website. And if websites are any indicators of British consumer behaviour, boy do they pounce on any anti Michael Schumacher post.

I find the British press highly motivated to protect McLaren and Lewis Hamilton at all costs and highly biased in anything to do with Ferrari, Alonso and Michael Schumacher. I remember during the spygate saga when I had a few posts criticizing McLaren, I received tons of hate mail quoting British dailies and tabloid which swore how McLaren was the victim in the whole incident.

I would like to add here, I have absolutely no problem with British folk, this swipe is intended at the British media only.

Coming back to Lewis Hamilton though, in an Interview to a news agency, Lewis Hamilton was quoted as saying :

“I want to be remembered as a fair driver as a clean driver and one that always drove with my heart and battled through thick and thin to score the points and the championships I will hopefully earn by then”

“For me, when I think about the history it is not just about me, it is about how my family raised me, and where we came from.

“For that to be potentially tainted by something like that (Michael Schumacher’s Monaco controversy) would be really devastating for me. That is definitely something I don’t want to be remembered for.”

How my family raised me , where we came from ? I really hope he is not playing the other kind of race card (The race not related to formula one). There is lots more in quotes from where that came from.

He often makes this attempt of projecting himself as a nice person a nice guy, but we all know the truth. His comments about his team principal (who literally raised him) or his teammates (we know about the Alonso controversy).

Anyway, coming back to Lewis Hamilton’s contention that he doesn’t want a legacy like Michael Schumacher, a little reality check, you can never get that kind of legacy, because you simply aren’t as good. Period.

Lewis Hamilton is eyeing another victory at the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend where he hopes to recreate the magic he had done in the 2008 edition of the race. Ofcourse the former world champion is yet to win a race this season (that’s another matter )

He called the Monaco Race Track the greatest track in formula one.

“I love the Monaco circuit, it’s the greatest track in Formula One,” Lewis Hamilton said.

“My victory here in 2008 is still probably my best win and one of the greatest moments in my career.

“It was an incredible day. It was wet and, looking at the week ahead, the weather also looks extremely unpredictable with heavy rain forecast for much of the week.

“But even if it doesn’t rain on the Sunday, the possibility of heavily disrupted practice and qualifying sessions means that we’ll probably go into the race with a chance of one of the most exciting and unpredictable Monaco races for many years.

“And on top of that, I’ll also be wearing a specially-painted helmet for the occasion. When you see it, you’ll know why I’ll be hoping for it to swing the odds in my favour.” the British Driver added

Ofcourse the thing about the helmet is just media talk, its just that McLaren partners Steinmetz have once again given the team diamonds for the helmet (and steering wheel ?).

The Steinmetz promotions with Kimi Raikkonen the iceman used to be big hits in the past. This year apart from the Diamonds, Lewis Hamilton seems to have a Roulette wheel on his helmet to celebrate the Monaco Grand Prix.

A Closer look at Lewis Hamilton’s New Helmet with the Casino markings :

In what is good news for formula one and Michael Schumacher fans all around the world, the German seemed to be on pace in the practice session of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix. We have been following this story all week right from the press stories against Michael Schumacher to the Mercedes GP change of the chassis of Michael Schumacher’s car in order to make the car more suitable for him. But the joy could be shortlived as teams could be testing different experimental combinations before the actual race.

Lewis Hamilton was fastest during the session while Jenson Button was second fastest in the session. Mark Webber for the Red Bull team was fourth ahead of his teammate Sebastien Vettel. Nico Rosberg, Michael Schumacher’s teammate was sixth in the practice session.

Fernando Alonso was eighth in the session while teammate Felipe Massa was twelfth in the other Ferrari car.

Ronn Dennis in a recent interview called them the best of friends, telling reporters about how these guys were playing chess against each other somewhere earlier in the season. And then he went on to add neither one of them had played chess before, now isn’t that a little suspicious ? Sounds like a put on act for the media .

Rumours that the drivers don’t get along were all the rage before the season started, in news reports which surfaced in January, there was talk that the two drivers had not even talked to each other since the signing of the contracts in November, then how did these seemingly ‘couldn’t care less about the other driver’ guys suddenly turn out to be super pals ?

On being asked whether he got along with Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton replied sarcastically :

No, we are just good actors and that is what we keep telling everybody! No, that was just a joke. We really get along very well, as we knew each other before we got into Formula One. I have known his dad since he was engineering my engines back in 1995. We have a huge amount of respect for one another. Naturally we want to beat each other, and in respect to the car we are on the same professional level

Interesting don’t you think ? Its almost like he said the truth initially

The opportunist <insert expletive here> that the International media is , it has started to blast Michael Schumacher and his comeback from retirement. Almost all big newspapers and news agencies have had articles criticizing the great German driver who has 7 driving championships to his belt.

Not to forget this is the same media that had hailed Michael Schumacher’s comeback as a super bold move in which Schumacher had kept his legacy on the line. But just four races into the season they have forgotten that he was off the track for so long and is competing with kids half his age who have been racing continuously for the past 5 years in formula one cars.

Its no secret that Michael Schumacher is struggling, he is rusty and his age has probably slowed down his reflexes. But can we overlook the fact that he has only had limited formula one experience till now. If he is here for the whole season, lets give him the whole season to show what he has to offer.

Biggest in its criticism was The Guardian. A British newspaper (no surprise there). The Brits love bashing Germans and French (Indians too ) . Anyway I read it in an article on motorsport.com , wasn’t able to locate the full article on Guardian’s website, its about when Lewis Hamilton was asked how it felt to race besides his childhood hero Michael Schumacher.

Jenson Button leaned over to Lewis Hamilton and asked Lewis Hamilton to tell the truth  and both of them laughed on it.

“The way things look, it would be no surprise to see him bowing out with as much dignity as he can salvage before the Formula One season is very much older,” The Guardian Continued.

Lets talk about the current world champion Jenson Button, he was handed the title on a platter last year when everyone recommended him to quit formula one. He was definitely one of the slowest drivers on the grid before his team exploited a FIA rule and was able to give him a car faster than all others on the field. and now look at him, snickering like that on a champion like Michael Schumacher.

Jenson Button just lost one fan here ! Oh Wait, I was never his fan