This time last year, following on from the Brazilian GP, half our attention was on newly crowned champion Lewis Hamilton, while the other half was on race winner Felipe Massa. The Brazilian had been astoundingly gracious in defeat, losing as he did, the world driver's championship on the last corner of his home Grand Prix.
One year on and all of our attention has been on Jenson Button, who won the championship in style this weekend. The two contenders who just missed out on the title haven't had much look in, not to mention the race winner, Mark Webber.
All the pictures I've seen of the young Sebastian Vettel have featured melancholy expressions, and never a smile. Even in the team photo celebrating Webber's win, where everyone is supposed to cheer loudly, Seb doesn't appear to be in a cheerful mood.
It's understandable, of course, that he is sad to have missed out on the title, but he had already thrown his toys out of the pram on Saturday. A terrible qualifying session wrote him out of what would have been a really tough fight back to the win anyway, so he must have realised that it was asking the impossible. Surely he can't still have believed he would be still able to do it come Sunday? He didn't hold back when it came to post race soundbites either:
"Second is the first loser. I don't really care about second or third."
Compare Seb's mood to Barrichello, though, who has been the perfect gentleman in the face of losing not only his shot for the title but also his second place in the standings. With one race left to go, he has a chance to grab that back, but he wasn't thinking of that. In the Brawn shots, he's smiling, he's happy. He lent Jenson his private plane for goodness sake.
Part of me prefers Rubens' attitude, it is certainly more constructive. He knows it was Button's fight to lose and is happy for his friend. However, I do quite like the fact that sulky Vettel isn't hiding away is his feelings. We often ask for our drivers to show more emotion, we can't be mad when this happens. Even if it does mean he won't be smiling for a few days.
What do you think? Did Massa raise the benchmark for magnanimity in defeat, and did the home crowd raise Barrichello's spirits as it did Felipe's a year earlier? Should Vettel be cheered or chastised for making such dejected comments?
They've been working all season for this championship and it literally came down to the wire, closer than any of us could have expected. The last F1 Digest of the season fills you in on everything that happened in those 71 laps.
The Race
It was just epic, right from the start. Only two retirees, and just two bouts of rain, but a lot of pitstops later and it came down to the very last corner of the entire race. We also saw some interesting strategies, with mixed results.
Conclusions
Coulthard and Massa are both understandably miserable, one's F1 career has ended in dismal style, and the other has had a rotten end to a tough year. However, there are always two sides to every story, and we have the joy of Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton to balance it all out.
This is F1 People, the Sidepodcast series taking you behind the scenes of the lives of some of the important names in the sport. Our last show features Ayrton Senna.
Ayrton Senna da Silva was born on March 21st 1960 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was a creative child at school, doing well in gymnastics, art and chemistry, but struggling with maths and English. His father was a wealthy landowner and businessman and started Senna off with a small kart at a young age. Senna excelled inside the kart, it brought him out of himself and really made him happy. When he turned 13 and was legally allowed to, he entered and won the South American Championship. He went on to be a runner up in the World Championships a couple of times. He adopted his mother’s maiden name Senna as a way to distinguish himself from the many da Silvas in Brazil.
In 1981, he entered the Formula Ford competition in Europe, and won it that year, and the next. In 1983, he moved to the British F3 championship, and won it. His natural ability meant four Formula 1 teams wanted him for a test – Williams, McLaren, Brabham and Toleman. He joined the latter in 1984. The Monaco Grand Prix of that debut year brought Senna the attention he deserved. He qualified a slow and difficult car in 13 th and on a wet day, he passed everyone except the leader before the race was stopped because of the weather.
Senna broke his contract with Toleman to join Lotus in 1985, and he achieved his first pole position at the opening round in Brazil. He retired from that race, but the rest of the season was more successful, with two wins, four other podium finishes and fourth place in the championship.
A few more years of success but no world championships, led Senna to McLaren in 1988, where he partnered with double-world champion Alain Prost. A fierce rivalry emerged between the pair, and after McLaren won 15 out of 16 races that year, Senna finally got his first world championship. Even when they were not team mates in following years, the battle continued. The championships yo-yoed between the pair, and the controversial incidents began to stack up. At one point Senna’s superlicence was suspended briefly for his conduct on track. However, he ended up with three world championships to his name, so it wasn’t all bad.
The early 90s saw a drop off in performance for McLaren, and although Senna still kept winning, his championship prospects were suffering and he started to look around for alternatives to his current team. His discontent led him to Williams in 1994. He had tried to join the team in 93, but they had Alain Prost who had a clause in his contract to keep his rival away from the team. When Senna joined in 94, Prost retired.
His early 1994 performance was good, and he took pole position at Imola – the third race of the season. He was rattled by other accidents and a death that weekend, but decided to race. On the 7 th lap, the car flew off track and hit a concrete wall. It took the medical team a long time to arrive at the scene, Senna was taken by helicopter to hospital and pronounced dead.
The Brazilian government declared three days of national mourning, and he was given a state funeral. It was discovered after his death that Senna had been donating millions of dollars of his own money to children’s charities – something he had kept secret while he was alive. The gentler side of him was only just beginning to emerge from the ruthless and talented, competitive driver that the world had seen. But no matter how many controversial incidents he was involved in, his popularity never wavered.
Ayrton Senna was the last driver to be killed during a Formula 1 race and his death continues to haunt the sport even after more than a decade.
That’s all for this episode, and this series of F1 People. Seven shows is not enough to do justice to everyone who deserves a biography, so look out for another series of F1 People in the future. Thanks for listening.
Theme music: Natives of the New Dawn, People.
