Race Rage

It's Sunday again, and there's a Formula 1 race on tv; this is the only reason I turn on the television. And for Moto GP races. I love racing, both the virtual and real, on four and two wheels, so I watch both King's classes.

_{Max Verstappen - Red Bull Racing
Image by Jen_ross83 - source: Flickr}

But even that rare television pleasure got ruined today. And that's almost impossible to do, for I'm a huge fan of both classes, with Formula 1 being my first speedy love. My dad was a die hard Senna fan (and of the Brazilian national soccer team), so that's where I got this fever. Even I still shed a silent tear when watching documentaries about Ayrton Senna da Silva on the moment they show his tragic death on the May first 1994; the man was a legend. So, since the early 1990s I've followed the sport continually, and in 2007 I became an immediate fan of Lewis Hamilton as I saw in him the same street-racing spirit I saw in drivers like Senna and Schumacher; Hamilton has just won his fifth world championship las race, the Mexican Grand Prix.

But that race was won by the latest addition to the racing-legends rostrum, the Dutch racing wonderboy Max Verstappen. Both the press and the formula one teams agreed that the Mexican Grand Prix would be the last chance for Verstappen's team, Red Bull Racing, to win a race; they have a particularly good chassis, with great aerodynamics and the best grip of all cars in medium fast corners and twisty bits of track, but they lack in the department of pure horsepower. So everyone understood that the last two races, Red Bull, and it's pilots Daniel Ricciardo (don't pronounce the "i" preceding the "a") and Max Verstappen, wouldn't stand a chance as both the Brazilian and the Abu Dhabi races are "power hungry" with uphill straits and long straits respectively.

Today was the Brazilian Grand Prix, and against all expectations and all odds, the Red Bulls were lightning fast! Especially Max Verstappen surprised racing fans worldwide with blazing speed, seemingly effortlessly breezing past the Ferraris from Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, and the Mercedes from Valterri Bottas and world champion Lewis Hamilton. So I was having a blast, on the edge of my seat, when the tragedy happened: another driver in one of the slower cars had fresher tires than Max, and tried to unlap himself. This means he was behind a full lap, but had a slightly faster car at the moment, so he tried to regain the position to no longer be a full lap behind.

Now this is a perfectly legal thing to do; if your car is faster you can unlap yourself, that's not the problem here. It's the way he did it, running into the side of the race leader Max Verstappen, slinging both cars into a spin. Max lost the lead to Lewis and finished a bitterly tasting second, only 1.4 seconds behind the winner, proving again that the Red Bull driven by Max was by far the fastest car of the day. Daniel Ricciardo did equally well, starting 15^th and finishing fourth, only a second behind the final podium place, that went to Kimi Raikkonen.

_{Formula One 2017 Rd.15 Malaysian GP: Max Verstappen (Red Bull) overtaking Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
source: Wikimedia Commons}

It was a great race, even if I would have liked Max to win, which he deserved today (Esteban Ocon, the driver that caused the collision, got a 10 second stop and go penalty by the race stewards). But I enjoyed the experience... Until the Dutch commentators ruined the day. And so did Max's reaction after the race toward Esteban Ocon; Max was raging mad and looked Esteban up in his pit box, called him a pussy and started pushing the other driver back. I think that's unprofessional, but it seems to be a quality of many great sportsmen that they are bad losers by nature. And I get that, you need to be willing to go to extremes to win in any type of sports-pinnacle, and I doubt indifference toward winning or losing won't get you there. But these men are also professionals and I don't care if you're Senna, Schumacher or even Max Verstappen, you need to behave in a professional way.

Still, Max I can forgive. Max I can understand even. But the commentators made me sick. All the Dutch commentators, and a good part of the international press too, actually said that Esteban Ocon was lucky to not have been punched in the face by Max. And that he should thank the heavens for not being banned for life for this admittedly stupid action. It's not the actions that are the problem here; it's the fact that the press, now even in sports, apparently feel that it's their task to throw oil on the fire. When the regular Dutch interviewer on track went to ask Esteban Ocon about the incident and Verstappen's understandable (but in my view very unprofessional) reaction, the studio commentator introduced that short interview with words like: "So, now it's time for our track-reporter to teach Esteban Ocon a lesson or two about racing". The studio guests commented afterwards by saying that the track reporter was far too easy on Esteban, and that it would have been totally justified if Max would have given him an uppercut.

Is there no professionalism left in mainstream journalism at all? Even the sports journalists behaved like a bunch of war-hungry little kids who got their candy taken away. I mean... What the F is going on here? Max is going to be studio guest and will be interviewed life tomorrow. I won't watch. Today I've been painfully reminded about why I don't watch television anymore.

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