1998! Zinedine Zidane has lifted the World Cup. Crisis roils the financial markets of East Asia. The Spice Girls are touring the United States. Jacques Villeneuve is having a miserable time defending his world championship for drivers. Grand Prix racing is clearly turning into something like big business, but most teams are still being underwritten by cigarette companies, state-of-the-art track facilities mean “not a tent” and the whole circus is still run from within Bernie Ecclestone’s still-quite-slate-haired head.
Narrow cars!
Grooved tyres!
Jos Verstappen!
Whatever these are!
Come the weekend of 27 September, F1 has been in the fairly novel position of having Ferrari and McLaren slug it out all season, and the teams have arrived at the Nurburgring (not in Luxembourg, but sort of close) with a championship battle critically poised between the pre-eminent Michael Schumacher and the experienced but until-recently-underappreciated Mika Hakkinen. Or to put it another way, between Jean Todt and Ron Dennis. Or Ross Brawn and Adrian Newey. Or Goodyear and Bridgestone. It’s been a binary sort of year. But the point is that with two rounds to go, Schumacher and Hakkinen are both on 80 points, with six wins apiece and the McLaren driver’s two second places breaking the tie.
A midseason of barely believable twists and turns elevated what had been a close but attritional season into a contest of inspiration, cunning, grit and all the other virtues of athletic competition. But after losing a probable one-two to mechanical gremlins and Ferrari pressure last time out at Monza, McLaren are mulling the prospect of their first championship since the days of Ayrton Senna slipping through their fingers. Momentum is shifting to Ferrari and Michael Schumacher, who have escaped the mediocrity that has haunted their mid-1990s and look towards their first championship since, er, Jody Scheckter. It’s a tense time!
Here's a spotter's guide, of sorts, to refresh your memory:
What else is going on? Ferrari and McLaren second-stringers David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine are contending for third place in the championship, although with two rounds to go Coulthard’s ten-point advantage and generally better form should be decisive. Their performances are likely to help decide the constructors’ championship, where McLaren currently lead Ferrari by 10 points. The battle for third-best team is rarely a glamorous one but it is extremely close, with Williams, Benetton and Jordan only separated by a couple of points. Williams have been the more consistent, as you might expect from the team that dominated the last two championships, but Jordan have scored points in the last six races having scored none in the previous eight, getting the majority of its haul with a 1-2 amid the carnage at the Belgian Grand Prix. So there’s much to be resolved in the battle behind the top two.
Also, who knows, maybe Eddie Irvine will win?
Let’s stay close to the hole where F1 used to be and get the video underway at 2pm GMT on Sunday 22 March. I’ll post a Youtube link closer to the event. No spoilers please!
Then we got skiffs, row boats, up until oil tanker size and to top it off a halo.
