Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
Raikkonen can put victory hopes on ice
Kimi Raikkonen’s return to Formula One after a two-year hiatus has enthused media, fans and rivals alike. But the question remains — does the Iceman’s comeback mean a cooling of double world champion Sebastian Vettel’s hopes of being red-hot favourite again next year?
Almost certainly not. Raikkonen’s return is certainly a good thing for Formula One. For the first time ever, the sport will see six world champions line up on the starting grid.
Known for his often monosyllabic approach to the media and love of a good party away from the racetrack, the return of the steely-eyed Finn will add another welcome storyline.
But don’t expect him to win a second world title.
For one, Raikkonen makes his return with what will be called the Lotus team next year. While a solid midfield team of late in their Renault guise, they haven’t won a race since 2008 when Fernando Alonso was driving for them.
Also, while they got off to a strong start in 2011, scoring podiums in the first two races of the season, their form tailed off towards the end of the year and they only just managed to hang on to fifth in the final standings ahead of Force India.
Schumi returns as if he’d never left
When Germany’s best-selling tabloid Bild sends two reporters to an overseas Formula One test in the depths of February, you know something big is brewing.
The return of Michael Schumacher, and the seven times world champion’s first drive of the new Mercedes W01, in Valencia on Monday triggered scenes reminiscent of the glory days when the German was so dominant with Ferrari.
Reporters and television crews pushed, shoved and elbowed each other to get a Schumacher soundbite at the end of the session.
His first lap was echoing around the blogosphere before he had even crossed the finish line.
Schumacher had earlier shown a fair turn of speed out on the racetrack — so fast that he bamboozled the timing system into putting him out front by a massive margin until it became obvious he had taken one of Bernie Ecclestone’s recommended short cuts — and ended the day third fastest.
Times do not mean a lot in testing, with the new fuel regulations leaving plenty of scope for teams to run light and impress would-be backers while others run through programmes with a full tank, but this all looked pretty good nonetheless.
“He was very enthusiastic. It was good to see the enthusiasm,” said team principal Ross Brawn. It would have been more of a surprise for me if he hadn’t been where he is today – so it was just confirmation really of what we both thought, that Michael should be competitive. One thing that came through was Michael’s precision about what is going on in the car. He has great clarity of reasoning in what he does and that is nice to work with again. It was a bit like old days but not as far back as ’91.”
I think Schumi is the best driver in the world. It is sad that he will not be driving for my beloved Ferrari, but I will still be pulling for him no matter what team he drives for.
Vlog-Schumacher shadow still hangs over Ferrari’s Maranello
Maranello is the spiritual home of Formula One glamour team Ferrari, but there is very little glitz in the working class northern Italian town.
Mark Meadows was there for the launch of Ferrari’s new 2010 car, which will have to go up against former favourite Michael Schumacher this season. Click on the video to hear more.
Schumacher faces up to his past
The late Peter Ustinov, a comic connoisseur of national stereotypes in his 1958 spoof commentary for an imaginary Grand Prix of Gibraltar, might have enjoyed Monday’s Mercedes team launch in Stuttgart.
As Michael Schumacher observed, referring to his new employers’ prospects for the season ahead, all the ingredients were there.
Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche, a man whose walrus moustache would not look out of place in a Munich beer hall, spoke firmly of the birth of the Deutsche Nationalmannschaft, the German national team.
An American reporter kicked off the questions to team principal Ross Brawn with a technical poser about the challenges of designing the 2010 car under the new rules, before the British media scratched around and dusted off old Anglo-German rivalries.
Schumacher, returning at the age of 41, was asked whether he felt he needed to prove he could win “in the right way” after controversies dating back to the days when he and Britain’s Damon Hill battled for the title.
The Italians wanted to know whether the former Ferrari favourite had been back to his favourite restaurant in Maranello.
There will be plenty more of this over the course of the season, one already presented in Britain as an Anglo-German duel between British heroes Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button in the McLaren camp and the all-German line-up at Mercedes.
Odd Germans and lucky underpants
Cynics may observe that Michael Schumacher’s desire to be the odd man out in Formula One has the added bonus of always putting the German ahead of his team mate in the pecking order, even if only on paper.
What Schumacher wants, Schumacher generally gets and it comes as no shock that the new Mercedes (formerly Brawn GP) team run by his old Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn immediately granted the seven times world champion’s wish and give him the number three on his car, ahead of Nico Rosberg’s number four.
Some may be more surprised that the most successful driver Formula One has ever seen, a man able to separate his private and personal life into compartments and rationally analyse everything around him, should be seemingly so superstitious.
But maybe they shouldn’t be.
Formula One, a sport that has seen 31 races marred by fatalities since the world championship started in 1950 and many more drivers killed in other arenas, has its rituals like any other competitive activity.
The number 13, unlucky in much of the world, is not allocated to any driver while some Italians have a thing about 17 because the Roman numerals XVII, when re-arranged, spell VIXI — meaning “I have lived” in Latin and therefore suggestive of death.
Rubens Barrichello swapped with Honda team mate Jenson Button for the 2006 season, although it didn’t do the Brazilian much good, because he wanted the number 11 that he had when he took the first race win of his career, all his karting titles and his first victory in the junior Formula Ford championship.
from The Great Debate UK:
The business of sport – predictions for 2010
VIRAL OUTBREAKS, DRIVING PROBLEMS AND 1980s FASHION SET TO DOMINATE SPORT IN 2010
Sport in 2009 proved to be as enthralling off-the-field of play as it was exhilarating on it, with high profile cases of cheating, corruption and player transgression affecting a number of sports, accompanied by some crowd-pleasing, record-breaking performances.
At the same time, the business, organisation and politics of sport continued to excite and baffle many of us in equal measure, with talk of sports brands, "fit and proper people" and legacy constantly simmering in the background of the collective sporting psyche.
With the fragrance of CR9 still in our nostrils, and the taste of fake blood still in our mouths, what has gone before in 2009 therefore provides us with some isotonic sustenance for looking forward to ‘five things we might see in 2010’.
Marketing Mania at FIFA World Cup 2010
Schumacher becomes a contender again
Formula One has moved on since Michael Schumacher retired in 2006, even if the German will be eager to roll back the years when he makes his comeback with Mercedes next season.
Despite turning 41 next month, the seven times world champion can be expected to show the same passion for racing, the same hunger for winning and the same ruthless determination.
“I was tired of Formula One by the end of 2006…but after three years of absence I am sort of getting back all the energy and I’m feeling strong right now,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I played around with motorbikes, and I feel ready for some serious stuff.”
Age will be against him, another foe to overcome for a driver who always prided himself on being one of the fittest and most professional on the grid, but nobody should rule out what would be a remarkable return to the top.
He is teaming up again with close friend Ross Brawn, the technical director who guided him to all his titles with Benetton and Ferrari, and that won eight of the 17 races last season as well as both championships.
Mercedes will also feel like home, the future champion having started out in sportscars with the German carmaker.
i dont think schumacher will be the same driver he sued to be…..he is old and maybe rusty and thinking of him becoming world champion again will be too much..
F1 Video Highlights
Schumacher – The Comeback Part II (or not?)
A lot of people are getting quite excited about the possibility of Michael Schumacher coming out of retirement to race for the new Mercedes F1 team (formerly known as champions Brawn) at the age of 41.
The German’s spokeswoman Sabine Kehm feels it is highly unlikely while Mercedes said at the weekend that “some speculations are nothing but dreams which will not come true” (although note the carmaker did not specifically say this particular piece of speculation was one of them).
Team principal Ross Brawn, who is currently on holiday, has been quoted by Germany’s Bild newspaper as saying that “the media are trying to put together a dream. Michael would have returned to the cockpit for Ferrari, but only temporarily. He has no ambitions to start a new career.”
Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone told the BBC on Sunday that he was “very doubtful” about any such comeback, however appealing it might be.
On the other hand, Kehm told Britain’s Times newspaper on Monday that “I can see a lot of tempting things in it for Michael, but I can also see a lot of non-tempting things. I don’t know.
“It is as it was in August when you couldn’t tell what was going to happen. Then I was convinced Michael would never come back and suddenly all the circumstances were right for him,” she added, referring to the champion’s abortive attempt to return as a stand-in for injured Brazilian Felipe Massa at Ferrari.
A Schumacher comeback has a lot of media appeal — witness all the stories — and not least because McLaren will have two British world champions next season in Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton.
Hmmmmmmmm,
It is very interesting, this scenario.
There are two things to happen, the first one would be that Michael is very happy and rich in his castle never to return to the circuit, and the other that this media circus is suppose to keep on our toes. In my personal opinion, he will come back to racing, he’s too much of a showman to pass on this chance.
Ferrari want a third car. Good or bad?
For 20 euros you can buy a Michael Schumacher ‘Comeback’ cap from the official Formula One merchandise stands at the Belgian Grand Prix.
The longed-for return will not happen this season, with the retired seven times world champion thwarted by a neck injury from replacing injured Brazilian Felipe Massa at Ferrari, but his manager Willi Weber never misses a trick.
Some 10,000 caps were produced in expectation of the German’s comeback at Valencia this month and, if Ferrari are allowed to run a third car next season, Weber may have to order some more.
Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali has suggested that the 40-year-old could race a third car for the team next season.
“It is true we are pushing (for three cars instead of two). We feel it is for the benefit of Formula One and it is better to make sure the biggest teams have three cars because that’s what people want,” he adds.
“With all respect to the smaller teams, the value of Formula One is to have good drivers, great personalities, in good cars and with a great brand.”
Who will replace Felipe Massa? (Part Two)
Who will replace Felipe Massa at Ferrari?
The question was asked in the immediate aftermath of the Brazilian’s life-threatening crash in Hungary last month and is now being asked again.
Luca Badoer got the nod for Valencia at the weekend but unless the 38-year-old Italian stand-in pulls something big out of the hat in Belgium this weekend the tifosi will be clamouring to have him out of the car before Ferrari’s home race at Monza.
The world champions, Formula One’s oldest and most successful team, simply cannot afford the ‘brutta figura’, the damage to their image and prestige, of having one driver on the podium and the other finishing last after being outqualified by a rookie young enough to be his son.
Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo warned his team against becoming a laughing stock when they bungled a few pitstops earlier this year and that is as nothing compared to what they could be in for if Badoer fails to raise his game at Spa-Francorchamps.
Formula One can be a cruel sport and regulars queuing up at airline check-in desks on Monday morning were already talking about ‘Look How Bad You Are’ and wondering whether he had finished the race yet.
In fact the jokes started even on Friday when he was fined and reprimanded for speeding in the pit lane on four separate occasions while being more than a second slower than everyone else on the track in practice.
Fisichella looking a better shout that ever after today… no slouch indeed, alan.
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Resident Left Field Expert
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but he wasnt on the top step…