F1 Blog: Alonso Can Pretend It’s Sand in His Eye at Abu Dhabi, but No-One Will Believe Him

It was supposed to be Alonso’s coronation. Amid the vulgar scene of the world’s most glamorous, wealthy, and well-connected people in the world descending on the starting grid before the final race of the Formula 1 season, Alonso was the man to be seen with. Bernie Ecclestone, the goblin guardian of F1’s riches, reached up on tip-toes to give his man a pat on the shoulder. Sheikh Mohammed, the man who’d transferred half of the United Arab Emirates oil wealth over to Ecclestone for the privilege of staging the race, had himself introduced to the champion to-be. Bizarrely, Juan Carlos I, reigning head-of-state of Spain, was there, exuding Berlusconian ‘charm’, giving the pride of a nation a suffocating embrace and an affectionate slap on the cheek. Where was the Queen, and why wasn’t she giving Lewis a chummy pep talk this Remembrance Sunday? Alonso smiled all the while. And yet, when he put his helmet on, was that fear we could see in his eyes through his visor?

The man we should have been watching was relaxed, away from all that. We were all distracted by the prospect of Vettel potentially facing team orders to move aside for Webber, amid an inter-team rivalry that had torn the Red Bull garage asunder in the manner of the Montagues and Capulets. But Vettel was in a higher state of calm, spouting Confucian epigrams. When Martin Brundle euphemistically put the point of team orders to him: ‘What are your responsibilities today?’, Vettel responded ‘My hands. I drive the car with my hands’. What could have sounded on another day like Capello-style semi-incomprehensible poetic abstraction was today prophesy. We all knew what he meant really. His job was to win the race. Whatever happens behind, happens behind.

In all honesty, the dye was cast in the first two laps. Button put Alonso into fourth with a fantastic start, while at the front Vettel bravely fended off Hamilton into turn one to maintain first. But the turning point was the scary, but in retrospect funny, sight of Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes being ever so lightly touched into a spin which left him facing the on-rushing traffic. Vitantonio Liuzzi duly plowed head-on into him with barely a tap of the break prior. Thankfully, what could have been even a few years ago a career-ending injury saw Schumacher emerge with a wave and a wink at the crowd. No, it’ll take far more than that for him to take the hint to retire.

That crash brought the safety car on, and a few of the middle order decided to take the opportunity to dash to the pits for their tyre-change. Webber followed and Ferrari, sensing that they had to keep themselves ahead of him, pitted Alonso. Job done. Ferrari had pitted, and emerged ahead of Webber. Only they had unwittingly pitched themselves behind these mid-runners in the process. Ferrari had forgotten that there were four men in the championship, not two. Alonso was left looking at the rear end of the stubborn Petrov’s yellow Renault for the rest of the race, and the title simply drifted away from him. Webber, for his part, had served as the perfect decoy to drag Alonso into the quagmire of mid-pack obscurity, to the gain of the rival Red Bull family.

Alonso drove alongside Petrov after finishing and treated him to some flamboyant Mediterranean hand gestures, incensed that Petrov had dared to defend his position. Such a charming display of magnamity handily helped us all to extinguish any sympathy we might have been feeling for him for losing the title. Vettel, meanwhile, gave a schizophrenic outburst of woops and tears on his team radio on his victory lap. We’ll give him that one, considering he’s young enough that one suspects he’d have given the same euphoric response if handed a lollipop at the doctors. The veritable glut of proven driving talent next year, where five world champions will be in the field, is frankly scary. Red Bull’s dominance will surely come under harder challenge from McLaren and Ferrari, but we can all expect to see a few more heart-warming boyish grins from the German

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