Peter Windsor On the Mess In Hungary

I’m writing this on the flight back to London after our weekend in Hungary so I speak first, given the number of smartly-dressed Bridgestone people on this 757, of the enormity of the Bridgestone task in 2007. Eleven F1 teams – all with unique cars. Seventeen races on five continents. Conditions ranging from the dust and heat of Bahrain, to the rain, mist and monsoons of Japan, Malaysia and Brazil.
A massive problem, by any standards – and one that we frequently take for granted.

Bridgestone got it right again in Hungary, even though their soft/super-soft tyre decision on paper looked to be amazingly aggressive. There’s talk in F1 circles that there should be more compounds on offer in 2008 – and of course the teams could do a better job if they could choose from a wider range. What about production though? For Bridgestone it would be a nightmare multiplied by two. If they can do the job adequately with two compounds, F1 should be looking at the possibility of reducing the range to one, not expanding it to four.

Anyway, enough of the nitty-gritty. What about the big picture? Difficult to know where to start, so I’ll go for the jugular: Lewis Hamilton came of age in Budapest, showing for the first time what all great, great F1 drivers invevitably show – and that is an ability to follow his own instincts and to stand by them with total self-belief. To my mind, the most impressive thing about his weekend was the way he handled the ongoing dramas. He’s only 22, for Pete’s sake, and yet he showed Fernando Alonso up as a double world champion under pressure.

The first issue at stake, of course, was the business of that extra lap in Q3. We’ve talked a lot about Q3 this year because it is an ever-evolving business with massive bearing on the race. About five or six “fuel-burn” laps proceed the two, final, grid-defining fast sprints – but “fuel-burn” is these days a misnomer. If you want to cover one more lap than your team-mate, or your nearest opponent – which is always a good thing when it comes to “claiming back fuel” on Sunday morning – you have to run Q3 pretty much on the limit in every sense of the word. You have to be first in the pit lane queue (which means having an engine that can idle for over four minutes, as we’ve said before); you have to be first out of the first corner – and then you need to put in a series of very quick laps, driving at around eight-tenths. The timing is so tight, indeed, that usually only one driver from each team will be able to get it right. Lie second in the exit queue, or stack in the pit stops…and you can be in trouble.

An alternative solution has therefore evolved for drivers who choose – or are told – not to go for the extra lap. They instead play a “defensive” role: they drive perhaps two seconds per lap slower and try to ensure that one of their major rivals is mixed up with them, thus ensuring that they, too, are prevented from going for the extra lap. Fernando Alonso did this well in Q3 in France, when he “played” with Felipe Massa for a lap or two. Meanwhile Kimi, as we reported at the time, used his “extra” lap as a slow one, taking advantage of the absence, this year, of a minimum-speed rule.

On Friday night in Hungary, with the MP4-22s looking very good on this high downforce circuit, Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer, Phil Prew, told Lewis that he and Mark Slade (Fernando Alonso’s race engineer) had been instructed to organize Q3 on Saturday in such a way that Fernando went for the extra lap. In other words, if Lewis at any point found himself ahead of Fernando, he should let him by. The corollary wasn’t talked about, however - ie, it was not agreed that Lewis would play the slower, “spoiler” role.

At this point I have to plead ignorance as to why this specific instruction was given. Was it Fernando’s “turn”? I would guess not. Lewis told me after the race that he had thought about that instruction a lot, had asked the engineers again to repeat it and at the time didn’t actually agree with it in his own mind, even if he didn’t say so loud and clear. Thit suggests that the instruction was something out of the ordinary. I asked him about the rationale he was given but, on the point of telling me, he suddenly broke into a shy smile and said, “I’d love to tell you but I don’t think I should. I’m already in enough trouble!” Again, this suggests that the reason was something abnormal.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Ron Dennis, after the Nurburgring, came under a bit of pressure from Fernando about the team’s best championship chance being with him, Fernando, and not Lewis - and that Fernando should therefore be given the odd helping hard or two – when appropriate – at least until he was about level with Lewis on points. Then McLaren could play it their way. Then they could both race.

This makes sense, if only because Ron has spent most of this year jumping from side to side, on the one hand being the proud second father to Lewis, on the other trying to make Fernando feel like part of the family.

Anyway, fast-forward to Q3, where Lewis (probably by secret design rather than luck!) manages to leave the garage first and takes the pit lane “pole”. Fernando is a few seconds behind and pointedly parks his car slightly to the right of Lewis, filling his mirror. Behind Fernando, ominously, sits Kimi Raikkonen.

The green light glows and Lewis is away like a bullet, concerned primarily with getting away from Kimi’s Ferrari. In his subconscious, Fernando will be doing likewise.

Fernando, though, has other ideas. He knows that Lewis is going to let him lead – and he doesn’t want Lewis running quickly, either, because he, Fernando, alone wants the extra lap. Put another way, what would be the point of the extra lap if Lewis and Kimi have it too?

On the McLaren pit wall, I imagine at this point that mayhem ensued. If the team were incapable at the Nurburgring of putting Lewis onto wet tyres on the formation lap – he was tenth on the grid, with nothing to lose! – and then, when given an unexpected bonus arrived in the form of Charlie Whiting allowing Lewis to unlap himself behind the Safety Car, they blow it by trying to add a tyre change to the “bonus” lap, thus forcing Charlie immediately to bring in the Safety Car and nullify Lewis’s bonus – when they are capable of all that - can you imagine what would have transpired when Fernando began to shout on the radio, “where is Lewis? Is he going to let me past? Is he going to let me past?”

There would have been major discussion, you can be sure, between Prew and Slade. Steve Hallam, their strategist, would probably have joined in – and then Ron Dennis would have entered the fray, trying to make the right decision at the right time. In the background, Prew would have been on the radio to Lewis, asking him to slow – and Fernando would have been keeping on at Slade. All in the space of five minutes or so.

In the mind – the brilliant, racing mind – of Lewis Hamilton, the fluxes of thought were telling him not to slow down and to let Kimi Raikkonen anywhere near him. Fernando? Where was he? Logically, given the presence of the Ferrari, wouldn’t it be better for Fernando to drive quickly and for both of them to try for the extra lap? McLaren could do it. Sure they could.

Of course, the flaw in that argument was that Fernando these days is concerned as much with Lewis as he is with Kimi – which is how you would think if you are a world champion who can’t understand why he is getting blown away by the new kid on the block. If Fernando was going to say, as Jimmy Connors had to say when John McEnroe arrived, “look, Lewis is quicker than me. I admit it. I’m going to have to raise my game and it’s going to be fun” – or words to that effect – then he would have done so by now. Personally, I always thought it was in Fernando to do this. It is the strong, healthy, intelligent thing to do.

The “ego” (or more correctly the “id”) is a powerful thing, however. Fernando, clearly, has chosen to follow the more treacherous route – the one on which you believe without question that you are the best driver in the history of the world and that, whenever you are out-qualified or beaten in a race, it is because someone else has let you down – be it mechanic, engineer, team manager or governor of the sport.

In Fernando’s field of perception, Lewis had deliberately defied team orders and taken off into a world of his own. That being so, all bets were off. He slowed down even more, let Kimi go.

And again it gets murky. The FIA Stewards, in a statement issued later, say that at this point the McLaren management began a systematic campaign to try to delay the progress of Lewis Hamilton. Fernando’s first Q3 pit stop was a long, wait-for-the-countdown affair compounded by a stray tyre cover; at his second, Fernando waited a full nine seconds after the lollipop was raised before he let out the clutch and cleared the box for Lewis, who was by now a lap ahead and thus stacked up behind. By then, it was too late for Lewis’s second quick lap. Fernando took the pole with his – and neither of them got the “extra” lap. Ironically, Kimi did…

I say “murky” because the FIA based much of their judgement on Fernando’s two delayed stops being something way out of the F1 norm and thus very suspicious. In the minds of the stewards, Fernando’s first, delayed stop (behind which Lewis was not stacked) was just as significant as the second. It was all part of a delaying strategy, I was told in their offices later.

The problem with this, I think, is that Ron Dennis and Fernando clearly stated that they often delay Q3 stops this way, waiting for the track to be at its fastest or clearest – and Ferrari associates involved with Kimi Raikkonen confirmed that they have done likewise. If so, why do we not know one way or the other? The answer to that is that the press are not allowed in the pit lane for qualifying and that we are therefore dependent on TV pictures to tell the story. If the cameras aren’t showing a stop in its entirety, it’s difficult to make the call…

Lewis, for his part, denied that he has ever been held in Q3 – or that he has seen Fernando being held. I think the Stewards took this into account in their judgement. I should also tell you that teams are obliged to hand radio transmissions over the to the FIA only if they take place in the race; thus the FIA did not hear all the transmissions from this particular episode.

For me, the critical element of the whole thing are those nine seconds after Fernando’s lollipop was raised: at that point, Dennis said in a press conference, Fernando was still being “held” by Mark Slade, who was looking for a clear traffic slot on the GPS system. By the time of the stewards enquiry, however, McLaren had changed their story. In these nine seconds, they said, Fernando was talking to Slade about why he was using used, rather than new super-softs. The Stewards accepted this – but then asked why Fernando hadn’t raised the issue about 20 seconds before, when the tyre covers were removed.

If anything, therefore, you’d have to say that the critical delay was driven by both Fernando and Slade, making this both a driver and a team thing – and that the punishment was correct.

Full marks, though, to both drivers for the way they handled it. Fernando refrained from mentioning the Q3 strategy issue in the big intereviews following qualifying – and Lewis remained calm and smooth, never blaming Fernando or the team for something about which he obviously felt hugely emotional. He had just had the biggest argument in his ten-year life with Ron Dennis; he had obviously annoyed at least 50 per cent of the team – and he had lost the pole. Rather than shout and scream in public, as plenty of other drivers would have done, Lewis took the first opportunity available to apologise to everyone at McLaren for a mistake he may have made. Then he said down with Ron to explain his thinking in Q3. Having heard it, Ron said that he understood – that it was in Lewis’s character to do exactly what he’d done.

The upshot is that Lewis, I think, has elevated himself to an even higher plane. He trusted himself, and it paid off. Sort of. At worst, he learned a lot not only about the team, about Fernando and about how to play the game but also about himself. Fernando, on the other hand, has dropped a level or two. The cool thing – again – would have been for Fernando to have made a joke of it, as in “Lewis was supposed to let me past in Q3 but he left the pit lane like a scalded rabbit so I just had a bit of a race with Kimi. I’ll get you back tomorrow, buddy – just you wait…” – or some such thing. That would have made Lewis feel a little bit guilty and the words, and the questions from the press about disobeying team instructions might have preyed on his mind in the closing stages of the race, when Fernando would have been looking for a way past the guy with the dodgy steering…

Instead, Fernando has entered a one-way street with not too many side exits. He refused even to say “hello” to Lewis on Saturday night or Sunday morning and already he has begun to tell the Spanish press that he is thinking of leaving McLaren after only one season. Of course Renault would take him straight back – and for F1 that would probably be a good thing. Lewis and (let’s guess at Nico) at McLaren, Kimi and Felipe at Ferrari, Fernando and Heikki at Renault…. It would be a championship nicely-balanced.

And, you could argue, it is what we should have had all along because, as Michael proved over his ten years with Ferrari, two into one doesn’t go…

 

Friday, August 3

Ok. Forget Nurburgring. The positives were there but plenty were the negatives, too. Good to get them all over in one weekend – you could say that. The worst thing was the lap that got away. There was Lewis, despite the qualifying shunt, despite the first-lap puncture, despite the trip into the sand trap, here he was, being invited by Charlie Whiting to regain a lap on the field behind the Safety Car…and what do McLaren do? They decide to use the time to change tyres, as well. Not surprisingly, looking back, Charlie brought in the Safety Car as soon as he saw Lewis entering the pit lane. No-one takes the Mickey out of Charlie. So it was a chance lost. Lewis could have been on the same lap as the pack and fighting genuinely for position.

Anyway, that was Germany. Now Budapest. Lewis had a bit of a shunt there on Friday last year in the GP2 car but drove good recovery races. The McLaren should be great.

The track is pretty green in the morning but everything goes well. The big thing is going to be managing the tyres. The Super-Soft is a (ital) soft (ital) tyre for Hungary but one presumes that Bridgestone know what they’re doing. The plan is to take the long-term view and anticipate the track conditions on Sunday. At present, that isn’t easy, because they’re forecasting a 50-50 chance of rain.

They also say that the Ferraris aren’t going to be brilliant here but you never make assumptions. They finish the morning as quick as Lewis and Fernando. Still, these are short runs. P2 – the afternoon session – should be more revealing.

Again it’s close. Fernando is fastest – 1min 20.9sec. Lewis is four-tenths slower but that’s mainly because of a lurid spin out where he shunted last year. He was on a really quick lap near the end, catching Yamamoto’s Spyker, but for a millisecond he was distracted. He beached it in the sandtrap it this time. No reason to keep the engine running…

Ferrari are not far away and Kovalainen is quick in the Renault, although his fuel load is questionable. So it’s a good day overall. A Lewis day. You find the limits on a Friday. You play with a few different pieces of road. You appear to be a bit ragged maybe but it’s all part of the game.

Much later, though, in a team meeting, the engineers ask him to give way to Fernando in Q3 on Saturday – assuming they both make Q3. Lewis asks why and isn’t convinced by the explanation, particularly as it looks as though he is going to have the heavier fuel load. This is important, because it’s generally only possible for one of the two drivers to be quick enough out of the pit lane to get a clear run and thus a real shot at gaining an extra lap. They call it “fuel burn” but they’re not cruising around out there. You’ve got to be just about on the limit throughout the session to gain the lap. If you’re in traffic, about the best you can do is slow down another car to (ital) prevent (ital) it from gaining a lap.

Anyway, Lewis thinks about the instruction and asks about it again. The decision has come from the top. Fernando needs to close the points gap. The extra lap will be his.

So Lewis thinks about it some more: it’s one thing to help Fernando; it’s another actually to penalise yourself. He leaves the meeting feeling confused. He needs to think of Number One – needs to back himself; that is what he has always done. On the other hand, he has had a team instruction. That is also important.

It rains Friday night, washing the track clean. Inside the Hilton, Nick Hamilton, Lewis’s brother, races Bruno Senna on a computer lap of Bahrain. Bruno, who on this occasion is Fernando Alonso, Renault driver, wins by a couple of seconds. Nick blames his selection: he is Juan Pablo Montoya.

Saturday, August 4

Today is colder – or less hot; put it that way. It rains towards the end of morning practice, leaving a big question-mark about Sunday. As it turns out, though, the grip level isn’t too bad. Lewis begins to enjoy the rhythm of the Hungaroring lap – the downhill plunges, the rotation he can get on the McLaren by turning-in to the slow corners (ital) just (ital) the right way. Squeeze on the power, drive to the exit, keep it straight… It’s a satisfying, technical track that rewards tiny details of weight management. Qualifying will be good. The only question is the tyres. Primes or Options? Scrubbed or new? Lewis opts for new Super-Softs.

For Q2, that is. For Q1, the Prime is no problem. Lewis is quick, too – just as he needs to be, given this Q3 decision thing: 1min 19.6. Fernando responds with a messy-looking 1min 20.4. Ok. Gloves off.

On the new option tyres in Q2, the McLaren feels even better. 1min 19.3. A great lap. Just about perfect. Fernando, just behind him on the road, is 0.3sec slower, kicking up the odd puff of exit dust where Lewis is just squeaky-clean. Kimi’s in the low 1min 20s and Massa – where’s Massa? Massa’s in trouble. They push him up the pit lane for more fuel and then he’s all over the place trying to make the top ten. He loses it big-time in the last sector and is out of Q3. Unbelievable.

Lewis is confident of the pole, despite his heavier fuel load. Three tenths is about his handicap over Fernando. It’s doable.

Phil Prew and the boys have him out of the garage first for Q3, up at the front of the pit lane. Just where he likes to be. Fernando, a few moments later, is parked off to the right, with Kimi immediately behind him. In his headset Lewis again hears the words: “let Fernando past”. He stays focused. He needs to get away from Kimi – that’s for sure. Green light. He guns the McLaren. The extra lap is tempting him.

Out there on the circuit, pretty much on his own, with free air behind him, he wonders about Fernando. Has he broken free of Kimi? He looks in his mirrors. Where is Fernando? Lewis’s first flying lap is a 1min 22.0; Fernando’s is a 1min 24.8. What’s going on? (ital) Where is Fernando? (ital) Lewis does three more quick laps. Fernando does three more slow ones.

The radio has been crackling: “Lewis, let Fernando past”. “Lewis, let Fernando past”. Lewis (ital) can’t do it (ital). Maybe if Fernando was right there behind him – well, yes, no problem. Hungary’s the sort of place where they could both go for an extra lap. Like this? Like this he needs to slow right down and let not only Fernando catch him but also Kimi. He’s got to look after Number One! His natural, gut instinct as a racing driver tells him that he’s got to keep the gap. He’s confused, but it feels right. And wrong. The team are reminding him that he’s wrong…

“In, Lewis, in.” Stop one. A new set of options. Great pitwork guys. Go!

The lap is a gem: 1min 19.7 sec. P1.

It’s on the in-lap that he begins to sense that something is wrong:

“Lewis, slow down. Give yourself space for the pit stop. Slow down.”

He does. A lot – and it could be perfect! He can see Fernando’s car in the pit box as he hits the pit lane speed-limiter. Slow…slow…come on boys…lollipop up…but Fernando doesn’t move. He just doesn’t move. Lewis has never seen anything like it. He is shocked. Amazed. He gets on the radio. He asks Ron what’s going on. Ron, obviously angry, tells him to wait. Is this all about the Q3 decision? Must be. He shouts something back and then just waits and waits and waits until finally Fernando leaves and then he drives the car forward but it’s obviously going to be too late and he’s going to lose his second run and that extra lap he thought he had.

What to do? Above all be calm. Don’t rise to it. Get the interviews out of the way. Obviously Ron is angry. Obviously he – Lewis - has made a mistake or done something wrong. This is the angriest he’s ever seen Ron. Difficult to believe that they’d hold him back because of that but no point in jumping to conclusions. Lewis is P2, Fernando P1. Both cars on the front row. Could be worse. Kimi’s nearly a second slower. Must be running more fuel.

It’s a messy Saturday afternoon. Press conferences. Question after question. He is polite and civil throughout, unsure himself of exactly what happened. He sees Ron. He apologies for the mistake. He knows Ron well. Ron knows (ital) him (ital) well. He feels bad for the team and the boys and everyone but he explains the way he was thinking and that it is sort of on another level, away from normal racing things, and Ron tells him that he understands – that it is completely in Lewis’s character to do that. He’s a racer, after all. Lewis smiles and says that the main thing is that they have a front row lock-out.

Lewis walks towards Fernando, says “hi” – but Fernando blanks him. In the FIA office, in front of the stewards, Fernando says that being held in the pits like this in Q3 is normal, and that in the last few seconds he was asking about his tyres – about why they were scrubbed rather than new – but Lewis begins to realize that (ital) both (ital) of Fernando’s stops were delayed and that something weird had definitely happened.

Then comes the news, late at night, that Fernando and the team are to be penalised. Lewis will start from the pole.

Sunday, August 5

There was no rain. And he drove a perfect race, of course, as Lewis Carl Hamilton was always going to drive a perfect race from a clean-side pole in Hungary. Never mind a Kimi Ferrari constantly in his mirrors. Never mind slightly awry steering (a la Kimi in Canada, 2005). Kimi occasionally sprayed the dust in 07 in Hungary; Fernando, in his chase up to fourth, occasionally ran wide over the rumble strips. Lewis, though, was immaculate – a stunning, error-free winner from start to high-pressure finish. Kimi drove the closing laps to within a second, pushed Lewis as far as he could into the realms of making a mistake…but Lewis remained inch-perfect, unruffled. His was a majestic, beautifully-crafted drive.

“Who set fastest lap?” said Lewis expectedly after the podium ceremony.
“One Kimi Raikkonen – on the last lap.”
Kimi smiled. Lewis punched him on the arm.

Then came the real Lewis:

“With everything that’s gone on it would have been difficult to lose focus. It’s been a downer for the team but the great thing is that we’ve remained positive. The energy still remains. And it just proves that nothing can stop us. On the morning of the race I felt a big cloud over my mind because the team weren’t getting any points. I didn’t know whether everyone hated me or whether they just hated the situation or who they were blaming. It was difficult, so I just went into the garage with a smile on my face and tried to remain positive and do everything as normal. I went around the whole team and we wished each other luck – or most of us did! - and then I just got in and did my job. On the grid I thought about how lucky I was to have such great people behind me – the team and also my family. There was a lot of pressure from Kimi all day but I know how to win and we were able to win, despite the problems. And the team was able to show just how strong they are. I don’t believe any other team in the world could have coped better with a weekend like this.

“And you know what? I still respect Fernando. I’ve grown up watching him and I have always really admired what he’s done and that doesn’t change.”

The real Lewis. The definitive Lewis. A brilliant star who never shone brighter – or learned more – than on this first Sunday of August, 2007.

 

Exactly.

Yes, it is an opinion. A rather interesting one as he probably knows more people in F1 than most of us Fchatters do. Plus, he used to mange an office for SF and work in F1 so he has some inside experience.

The media has so sensationalized the stories to get attention, it is refreshing to hear a more reflective opinion rather than attention grabbing headilnes and hype.

I agree that Lewis' stock has gone up and Alonso's has gone down since the events in Hungary. The rookie outclassed the 2xWDC IMVHO.

 

The most significant thing, I think, about McLaren’s Hungaroring schemozzle was that Michael Schumacher also chose this race to announce that he’d had enough of F1, 2007-style, and would hereafter be staying at home. I’m not surprised. He spends ten years spelling out the rules of (caps) How To Win the World Championship (caps) – written big – so big that he takes Ferrari to more titles in a decade than they had won over the previous thirty years – and nobody in F1 seems to have learnt a thing. Not Ferrari. Not McLaren. Not the drivers. It’s as if Jack Nicklaus 30 years ago perfected the art of accurately measuring the distance to the pin and the rest of the golf pros of the world said, “Nah. Doesn’t work. Let’s just play by feel…”

A quick reminder, then, of the Michael Rules of how to do it:

1) Weight the team heavily in favour of one driver. If you’ve got Kimi Raikkonen, don’t cramp his style with a Juan Pablo Montoya or a Michael-taught Felipe Massa. Instead, go for an Eddie Irvine, a Rubens or a young Felipe – which in today’s language probably translates into, yes, still a Rubens, a Fisi or maybe a Heidfeld or a Heikki. Equally, if you’ve got a Michael-taught Felipe, you don’t need a Kimi. Two “number one” drivers spread your race options…but decrease your chances of winning a championship.

2) Have a very clear line of communication between the drivers and the management. In other words, if the lead driver wants an extra lap in Q3, it happens. Period. No discussion. Equally, if the rain falls on the formation lap at the Nurburgring, the lead driver calls the shots with his engineer. Too much of a gamble for you? Ok, we’ll put the other guy on wets…

3) The lead driver, his engineer and his Team Principal have radio over-ride. The team should never be in a position in which everyone is pressing a “talk” button simultaneously.

4) Never lock yourself into “data analysis” when it’s time to think on your feet. Once the cars are on the circuit, and the conditions are changing, back yourself and your team to make it happen.

5) As a driver, touch alcohol only occasionally (and then only after a win). When not driving the car at tests, examine every bit of information gathered. Always question all technical developments so that you are thoroughly aware of their upsides and downsides. You should know your car as well as your mechanics and your engineers. In this year of very limited testing, spend as much time as possible on your driving. Be self-critical – in and out of the car.

6) Again as a driver, ensure that you are the fittest guy in the pit lane. There is no downside.

7) Never complain of understeer until you are 100 per cent sure it cannot be solved with better management of the dynamic weight – ie, with better use of the steering, throttle and brakes. This is racing’s Ultimate Judgement Call. If you can minimise understeer with your technique, the profit is exponential.

8) Keep your entourage to a minimum. A trainer, maybe. A press rep perhaps. One or two close family members only. This is your place of work.

9) Say nothing to the world at large whenever possible. The less everyone knows about what you are thinking, or of what you have in the bank, the better your advantage.

10) Fight for every millisecond, every position. Never drive at less than ten-tenths.


Pretty simple…you would think. You have to feel a bit sorry for McLaren, I guess, because I suppose they might have thought at some point that Lewis was a good “number two” for Fernando Alonso. From Day One, though, they were in trouble. Today they need to massage Fernando. Tomorrow it will be Lewis, etc, etc. Having said that, you’d think that over an (ital) eleven (ital) year period McLaren would have gained a pretty good idea of how quick Lewis was going to be – and that they would have formed a relationship with him that transcended even the Michael Method of success. “Lewis – do this. Lewis – do that. Plenty of years ahead. Do what we say.” And so forth.

Not a bit of it. Lewis in Hungary barged through the door as great Grand Prix drivers do, “defending” his rights against the management and reacting to the moment as it materialised. As the best of them did – as Senna, Prost, Mansell and of course Michael Schumacher did.

For all that, it’s not only McLaren. Would Michael have allowed his Ferrari team to have been so distracted by Stepney-gate? (Would Stepney-gate have happened!?). Would Michael have hit the wall at Monaco in Q2? Would Michael have accelerated so hard on wets on a dry pit lane at the Nurburgring that he moved the unbonded Bridgestones on the rims? More probably, he would have done his homework.

No wonder the guy’s staying at home, getting away from it all. Playing computer golf, I dare say. Measuring every shot.