Random Musings

On Saturday, by some extraordinary stroke of luck someone decided to give me a Bay Grandstand ticket for tonight’s race, so I gratefully accepted.

At least now I can finally say that I’ve attend the Singapore Grand Prix.

This is the fourth grand prix that I’ve ever attended in my life (Suzuka ’05, Sepang ’05 & ’06), so it’s nice to hear the violent roar of a Formula 1 car once again.

“Violent” is probably the only way to describe the unmasked sound of a Formula 1 car in all its glory.

I’ve finally witnessed live a Ferrari victory, as the first 3 grand prix I’ve attended were not won by a Ferrari.

Anyhow, I’ve got lots of thoughts, but let’s just talk about Mark Webber for the moment.

This thing about this year’s championship is that you can’t really make a case for any particular driver being the most outstanding or the most dominant throughout the entire season.

Alonso’s form was erratic until recently.

Webber was off and on, and was hampered on a number of occasions by poor starts.

Vettel, of course, was involved in not a few silly incidents which showed his immaturity.

Hamilton, though hard-charging as always, has had to suffer two extremely costly DNFs in the last two races, which will no doubt effectively diminish any hope of a world championship this year.

However, that being said, I thought that Webber finally delivered today what I would consider the defining performance of the season thus far, to solidify his claim as the deserving world champion this year.

Yes, he was unable to come to terms with the Marina Bay circuit all weekend, and was duly outshone by Vettel in every instance.

However, he made the most of a bad situation.

He took a gamble and pitted early, and managed to make some critical passes after that, which eventually brought him up to third place at one point.

And then came the defining moment of the race (and possibly the season), when he almost got caught out by Lewis Hamilton, but fought back and somehow punted Lewis off the track and causing him to retire from the race.

That might well have been the title decider right there.

My view is that it was purely a racing incident, and Lewis once again has had to suffer a DNF due to a rash move on his part.

If the Monza one didn’t hurt him, this one definitely will.

Just think, he could possibly have picked up 30 points from the last two races alone (two 3rd place finishes)!

As I said after Monza, Lewis is an all-or-nothing racer, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

It certainly makes for entertaining viewing, but sometimes this isn’t necessarily the best approach to adopt in order to win a world title.

So kudos to Webber for gaining a crucial edge after tonight’s grand prix.

I’m picking him to take the world title this year.

The stakes get higher and higher as we reach the end of the season.

I just can’t wait for Suzuka…one of my favourite F1 tracks of all time!!!

(And once again I’m proud to say that I attended it in ’05…in what is widely-regarded as one of the greatest races of that decade.)