Home advantage for Hamilton?

"Excuse me whilst I say something mind-bogglingly stupid..."

It’s a tough time for Brits in Formula 1.

Both British teams, McLaren and Williams, are a million miles away from their championship-dominating glory years. McLaren are in a perilous 6th place, and Williams 10th. In case you’re unfamiliar with F1, and think that sounds OK-ish – there are only 10 teams.

Whilst brilliant British drivers have won many titles (Hunt, a couple of Hills, Button, Mansell etc.), 2018’s championship boasts just one driver from our fair isles – Lewis Hamilton. To be fair, he is pretty handy, having bagged four titles himself.

With the British Grand Prix taking place at Silverstone this weekend, if you want to support your home team or driver, you’re probably going to need to back just Lewis. If either of the two teams manage to have the first car past the chequered flag, I’ll be talking next week about the most dramatic race in history, whilst bookies sob uncontrollably.

It’s been a rocky road to his home race for Lewis. Despite multiple wins in the preceding nine races, his arch-rival, Germany’s Sebastian Vettel, has been pretty much equal throughout the year so far. Last weekend’s Austrian outing looked set to further advance Hamilton’s slim title race lead, with his Mercedes car bristling with upgrades and considerably faster than all but his team-mate.

Once upon a time, watching an F1 race involved seeing at least a quarter of the field breaking down, but recent years have showcased increased reliability. Unusually, both Mercs conked out in Austria, and whilst Seb in his shiny Ferrari didn’t win, his second place gave him enough points to put him back in the lead. By one point.

Fast approaching half way through the season, there’s just about nothing between the two veterans, both chasing their fifth title.

The other 18 drivers? Mathematically some could still do it, but that’s pretty unlikely. Kimi Raikkonen may be third, but no-one’s expecting him to beat his team-mate Seb. Lewis’s garage-buddy, Valterri Bottas, appears to have walked under multiple ladders whilst kicking black cats, and the Red Bull duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen are grabbing the odd win, but will need a carbon-fibre magic wand waved vigorously to see them catch-up.

So, tune in on Sunday and see if Hamilton can salvage a bit of motor-racing national pride. Love him or loathe him, he’s all we’ve got until the next generation of drivers grow up enough to reach the pedals properly.

This post first appeared as my "A wry look at the week" column, in The Mail, on Friday the 6th of July 2018. It did make it onto their website again as well as appearing in the print edition.

Great race it was too, with Hamilton denied victory after a first lap tangle with Kimi Raikkonen. Remarkably, Lewis claimed afterwards (when finally interviewed on the podium after dodging his media obligations on track) that Ferrari were using "interesting tactics".

He subsequently back-tracked, saying his comments were "dumb", and brought-on by exhaustion post-race. What. A. Knob. It's remarkable how many times I've started to like the guy again, only for him to pull some pouty-faced man-child crap like this.

Sorry, Lewis fans and those hoping for a British win - the spoilt brat doesn't deserve it.

(CD A-Z: A "Sounds of the Summer" compilation, that came with a copy of The Big Issue in May 2003!)