Right then Monza next ...
No driver wins a championship on his own. There is an army of staff sitting in the pits, on the wall and back at the factory, delivering a car, analysing data and fixing the bits the driver knocks off in practice. Any driver that forgets, that they are ultimately a very small part of a very big machine, is soon shown the door to his next team.
When drivers start to believe their own hype, take their eye off the team and the mood within the team, it usually starts to go very wrong. Because all those team members that deliver the car to the driver and help him win the adulation, the prizes and the millionaire lifestyle. Don’t get the sort of money the driver gets. They don’t get to rub shoulders with super models and spend a weekend making rap videos with American musicians of dubious reputation. No, they live in a four bed semi in Woking, an apartment in Milton Keens and a well appointed maisonette in down town Maranello.
Yes they’re doing it for the love of the sport and the chance to be part of a winning team. But mostly they’re doing it to cover the mortgage, pay off the car loan and get the kids that Doctor Who sonic screwdriver that all their mates have. The pit boys and girls still have to go to those twenty races, fix the car when it gets smeared down the wall of champions until three in the morning, then get up and get it qualified up the grid. Think about all those HRT boys who must know they’re never going to win a race, yet still there they are race after race delivering what they can with a shoe string budget. They’re not spending Friday night at the local hot spot to be seen at and parading down a fashion show runway.
So when the driver throws a tantrum and his toys out of the pram telling the press the team isn’t working for “HIM”, how do you think those teams members that were up at 2am pouring over raw data files looking for that ten tenths advantage feel ?
Now imagine the driver takes a picture of said raw data that includes his teammates’ information too. And publishes that picture to demonstrate how hard done by they have been. So not only is he showing how both the cars are being set up and how they are working. He is showing the world the sort of information the team pays a lot of money to keep very, very secure !
It’s a bit of a kick in the teeth for all those hard working people back in Wokingor Milton Keens or Maranello isn’t it. They are being accused of not caring, of not working hard enough for the multi millionaire, highly pampered racing driver who has just spent 3 weeks sunning himself on a private island with his superstar girlfriend.
Spa was not a great weekend for Lewis, let’s see how it goes at Monza shall we……..
No comments:
Post a Comment