Formula 1 Finale

Spoiler alert: If you haven't watched the race yet, don't read this.

I'm so disappointed I could cry.

I'm nearly speechless. And it'll be impossible to explain to those who don't follow Formula 1, but I now do, and it's all because of Netflix.

Credit Liberty, which purchased F1 from Bernie Ecclestone and brought the sport into the modern marketing era. Ecclestone was running on fumes. He was the progenitor, he put it all together, but he was resting on his laurels, ready to be superseded, just like all the companies that have been disrupted in the last twenty five years. Yes, the internet has delivered opportunities. And those who take advantage of them win.

So what you've got is an idiotic sport on its way to extinction. They don't race horse and buggies anymore, then again we've still got the Kentucky Derby, but the truth is it won't be long before none of us drive a car. Personally, I can't wait. Because of all the wankers on the highway, who are on their phones, who don't know how to drive in the first place. Yes, Tesla is pushing the envelope of self-driving using cameras only, whereas its competitors are employing radar or even lidar, like in the latest iPhones, because what about fog? Obstructions? But the destination is in sight.

So, you've got twenty people driving, not in a circle like in IndyCar or Nascar, but on twisty, turny courses that are not even flat, they go up and down.

Not interesting to me. I'm aware. I know about the victories of Mario Andretti and Jacques Villeneuve, I was always flummoxed by George Harrison's interest in the sport, aren't sports the antithesis of artistry? But now I'm hooked too. Because of the personalities, because of the dominance of Lewis Hamilton.

Oh, that's one thing you've got to know, of the ten teams, six or seven have no chance of winning the championship, NONE! Not only because of the expertise, but because of the money. So the best drivers end up with the best teams and you watch them slug it out. As for the danger, it's much safer now, but without the halo Lewis Hamilton would be dead now, it kept Max Verstappen's car from killing him when Max drove right over his head.

So, Red Bull. I've got no problem with Red Bull, I've got a problem with the head of its Formula 1 team, Christian Horner, married to Ginger Spice, he's an unsportsmanlike whiner. I was wondering if I was the only one who felt this way but then the "Washington Post" did an article on F1 and one of the commenters said:

Well, it turns out the WaPo deleted the comments. But the bottom line is this guy felt the same way about Christian Horner I do. Speaking to not only lovability, but credibility. Christian always takes his driver's side. He's always complaining to the officials. He doesn't accept any decision that goes against him, he's a biased conniver all of the time. As opposed to...

Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton's team.

At first Wolff turns you off, with that German accent. But then, as you continue to watch, you realize he's got a sense of humor and a sense of fairness. I want to hear everything he has to say.

As for the drivers...

Lewis Hamilton is British and Black. And very soft spoken. He never raises his voice. Rarely says anything negative. And stands up for truth, justice, and the concept of letting the best driver win.

As for Red Bull's Max Verstappen, he's Dutch, and today he didn't even take a knee during F1's all for one moment before the race. You see Max is only for himself, Hamilton is for everybody.

And for the first half of the season, Red Bull had the better car. And Max is a great driver, so he was ahead. But then...Mercedes caught up.

The rules are arcane. Both for construction and racing. On one hand you want everybody to race in the same car, but the truth is the richer teams do better, even though this year they capped spending. But Hamilton and the Mercedes team tweaked their car and suddenly it was faster. And Max didn't like that. And started employing what Hamilton labeled "crazy" driving. As a matter of fact, last week in Saudi Arabia, Verstappen ended up with two penalties, one of five seconds, one of ten seconds, as a result thereof.

So this week...

Verstappen started at the front of the grid, but Hamilton took the lead on the first turn and it stayed that way.

But here's where the games begin.

There are rules. And judgments. And they can affect the results. As well as yellow caution flags. And I won't bore you with all the details, but the bottom line is Verstappen stopped and changed his tires multiple times, losing very little time because of the yellow caution slowdowns, and Hamilton stayed out, on aging tires.

And then, just before the end, there was a crash, and the yellow flag returned and the rules guys, the arbiters, said there would be no passing in the pack, and at the last moment, changed their mind, with only one lap to go, and then Verstappen, on his new tires, got ahead of Hamilton and won the race and the season championship. It'd be like giving the presidency to Trump because the Supreme Court said he could find the votes in Georgia. Well, not quite as bad. And if you believe Trump won you shouldn't even be reading this, because you don't believe in facts.
So now it's over. Hamilton was leading until the last lap, at one point by almost twenty seconds. He had the faster car, he's the better driver. He was ahead by eleven seconds before the final caution flag, with only a handful of laps to go. But with Verstappen's new tires, and the rules, he lost.

Now what?

Not a whole hell of a lot, but the good guys did not win. And we hate it when the bad guys win. We want it to be fair and square, and on one hand this was, but on the other rules decisions were made and...

I won't bother going any deeper. I'll just say in only three years, Liberty has made Formula 1 racing the number two sport in the world, after football/soccer (well, maybe basketball too). And it's all via marketing. And focusing on celebrities. And it's enhanced by the web, with a deep news website and an app and... Forget fantasy football, in F1 you can hear the drivers talk DURING the race. Coaches too. You're on the track, albeit not at risk.

And they travel around the globe. And everybody involved wears a mask, because F1 has to set a good example, as well as being able to maintain competition, as it was one driver couldn't start today because of a positive Covid test. And Hamilton has been complaining about fatigue from long Covid all season.

But it all comes down to Netflix.

The first season Mercedes said no. As a result, all the attention and fame went to Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo and the Haas team, because they agreed to participate, and were honest. That's what we're looking for, honest participation.

Now the arts are not truly competitive. The business has charts and other metrics to create a ladder, but in reality there are few criteria that apply across all artists and their productions. But, in music and film, we don't have an overriding body which makes the trains run on time, which keeps everybody in order. And I'm not sure I want one, but it would help with the image and impact of today's artistic endeavors.

Forget the Grammys and the Oscars, they're like Bernie Ecclestone, trying to hold on to the past, afraid of losing what they might have. No, today you've got to go forward, do your best to get ahead of the public, and have people play into your hand. That was the genius of Spotify, it was ahead of the desires of the public, which ended up loving it. As for the complaining artists, they're stuck in the past. In F1 if you're a lousy driver, and the truth is all of them are great, so we're talking relatively speaking, you get a worse car and worse opportunities. You have to prove yourself and based on your accomplishments the spoils are distributed accordingly. But in music, the unknowns, the wannabes, the has-beens, believe they're entitled to a huge piece of the pie, whereas when you get older in F1 and end up on a worse team and are no longer competitive, you see the writing on the wall and retire.

And the truth is you shouldn't listen to the complainers, there's no upside, they want to tilt the tables in an inequitable way and ultimately everybody suffers, as the wankers continue to complain, never satisfied.

So IndyCar is a joke. They split into two rival circuits and never recovered. Nascar got stuck in the nineties and its footprint keeps shrinking. Because it wants no change.

F1 doesn't tell its athletes they can't take a knee. They embrace change. It's a worldwide organization. It's looking forward, as opposed to back. As for the personalities, they're consistently brighter and more articulate and with more personality than the Americans playing their lesser sports. In America it's all rah-rah all the time, you can't break ranks with the team, you can never be wrong, like Christian Horner, whereas in truth everybody wants Toto Wolff, a guy who can laugh at himself, who wants to win on the track.

Like that old Leonard Cohen song, everybody knows Christian Horner is a smiling prick. And everybody knows Lewis Hamilton got robbed today. Because the charts, the statistics, don't always tell you the truth.

So what we have here is a huge victory for Liberty and Formula 1, my phone pings with people who I didn't even know liked to drive, and who don't watch any other sports, and it all comes down to the Netflix show, everybody's hooked, and you will be too. As for sponsorship, it's baked in. But it's clear that they're glomming on to the enterprise, fueling it, but in the back seat...and in F1 cars there is no back seat.

They're changing the rules again next year. Theoretically making the teams more competitive. We'll find out. And the truth is once you dig deep, when teams are hunting for speed, it's like a space shuttle excursion, it's that deep and technical and slight in the overall picture but critical in the results.

So Max can say he won.

But my champion is still Lewis Hamilton. Because he was mellow, he wasn't self-centered, he was aware of the world and he's the best driver. We love someone who sits atop the pack based on their skill as opposed to manipulation, that's the essence of the Beatles. We marveled then and we marvel now. How could they never put out a stinker? And watching "Get Back" you realize it's not black magic, there are no tricks, it's just a a handful of people coming together to deliver the ultimate.

Lewis needs the Mercedes team. But unlike most of the drivers, he's heavily involved in the creation and tweaking of the car. And he's BLACK! He may be rich, but that does not mean he experiences no racism. Imagine if the best ski racer in the world was Black, or the best horse jumper, or a competitor in one of the other rich white man sports. It'd be confounding, the racists wouldn't like it, but they'd have to accept it.

We need more Lewis Hamiltons.

Because he's a star, he's a winner. You don't need bombast to succeed, you only need results.

I admit Max Verstappen is champion, but that does not mean I have to accept it. The rules fell his way. But there was no doubt on the track today that Lewis Hamilton was the better driver with the better car and deserved to win. But deserving doesn't always deliver victory. Remember that.


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