You know, I don't believe. I hope. I hope there is a sense in this suffering. That me at 7 considering to jump off a balcony, or me at 16 trying to jump in front of a truck, that leaving love, and failing to find it again, to choose a life reset in a different hemisphere, and that constant feeling of being out of place, a waste of time and space, nothing but pathetically average, has a sense. That this is not just random shit that happens…randomly. That everything will make sense at one stage. That I will feel right, even if I won't be in a race car testing for hours and hours (because that's where I feel I should be, since I was a child).
When I was a child, I was forced to go to church every Sunday…and that fearfully I would go and stay there until the end of the mass, I would not pay much attention to what the man on the altar was saying. It was the same thing I heard the year before, everything on rotation like Spotify if you don't have Premium. It keeps playing Bulls on Parade. I'm hating that song!
What I would do was ask the man upstairs for half a miracle, to even the odds, and put Schumacher in front. I found myself doing the same thing last night, after the stewards said that Hamilton cut the corner to avoid the unsafe attempt of overtake from Verstappen. Verstappen dived hard but made the corner. While Hamilton cut it, using the tarmac. What would have happened if the corner was full of sand?
I raised my eyes to the ceiling. I thought that what was happening was unfair. That something needed to happen. Verstappen flew on new tyres after a pit stop under VSC, but the gap was still too big. And then Perez, defending hard and clean, wasting Hamilton's time to help Max's comeback. But then the gap kept getting bigger. There was no beating Hamilton and his Mercedes. They had the pace. They had the best package.
The half miracle
The half miracle
But it happens that, we call this destiny, something…happens. Something so perfectly timed. Something that seems to be on purpose, like there's a script, a director, like some good WWE TV. And everything that happened until that point, even what was unfair, made sense. One of the two Williams loses control and crashed against the barriers. What to do? There is a lot of debris, but there are only five laps to go. Red flag like in Azerbaijan and mini race? Maybe, but the controversial red flag rule where everyone can change tires during a race suspension would cause more criticisms. Ending the championship behind the Safety Car? Not a chance. Not after the whole build-up, the seven-time champion about to become the “greatest of all time” vs the youngest F1 GP winner about to conquer his first championship and stop this sporting dictatorship in the last year of this formula. So, let's clean the track. Then what do we do? What happens to the backmarkers? Do we have the time to allow the backmarkers to unlap themselves and restart this race with a rolling start? No, there is no time. What if we allow only the cars in between the two championship contenders to unlap themselves, so that we have Hamilton vs Verstappen for the last lap? And whatever happens, happens. What a way to end this championship! What a way to go car racing! And so it happened, but with one important note at the bottom of the page: Verstappen stopped during the Safety Car to change tires. And he now has the freshest tyres, of the softest compound. And there is no gap. There is no DRS. There are three places to try and rewrite history. He does it straight away. Verstappen passes. He is the World Champion.
Deserving
Deserving
It is the snake that bites its tail, the circular story where the end and the beginning are the same thing. The Safety Car could have been rain. Latifi could have been Glock, and Verstappen could have been Felipe Massa. The last lap of the 2021 season, and the last lap of the 2008 season. The first championship of Max and the first of Lewis.
Va bene così, I repeated. That translates like “it's ok now”, or “I'm ok with this”. My oldest friend texted me “fuck that”. I know, he is right: from tomorrow, I swear, Max and Red Bull will rejoin the pack of the enemies of the Red Knights. For today, I'm ok with this.
What's left? Well, Mercedes will appeal to this result. The result could be placed sub judice. Ferrari scored the third place in the Constructors', yet Carlos finished in front of Charles in the Drivers'. The next season is about two months away. Kimi Raikkonen left in silence the paddock, with his family. Next season there won't be Italian drivers on the grid. Oscar Piastri won three championships in a row in three different categories; yet he won't race in F1 next season. The upcoming season of Drive To Survive will be a hit. Sky Sports F1 thinks that it is appropriate to make a Christmas advertisement out of 51G accident slomo. The core of F1 is compromised, with all the rules surrounding the formula needing a deep revision. And I need a break from F1, but I also bought F1 2021 on PS4…
Oh well, at least you get a break from me. I won't be so lucky.
Can I hope for this happy ending, too?
Can I hope for this happy ending, too?
From my couch in Sydney, enjoy your upcoming holidays. We might see each other soon for Against Hibernation. Or not. Will see.
Keyword: Lorenzo vs Destiny