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Lewis Masterful In The Rain
By Emma Aitken July 9 2008
Going in to the Silverstone weekend it looked like this one would go to Ferrari. They had been looking great and had always gone well round here. The rain fell though and Ferrari only showed how poorly they perform in the bad conditions. Hamilton, on the other hand, put in a flawless perfomance to take a superb first place.

Sitting high up in the stands opposite the start/finish line, with the wind howling and the rain lashing you would have thought us spectators would have been lamenting the horrible weather conditions. And before the race started we were! But then the lights went to green and we were given a master class on how to drive a flawless race in the wet by Mr Lewis Hamilton and all thoughts about the weather were forgotten. 

Yet again Lewis proved that when the rain is falling he is not a man to be beaten. He was tremendous. A better start he couldn’t have wished for. In the midst of a huge mist of spray he picked off Raikkonen and Webber to tuck in behind his team mate, in second place and we all knew claiming the lead was not too far away. From there on in the young Brit, who was so hungry for that precious home win didn’t put a tyre wrong which is even more impressive when you consider just how much everyone else was slipping and sliding all over the place. Not least the Ferrari’s. 

The Italian team were not exactly on the ball on Sunday and that is putting it mildly! Raikkonen had gradually been eating in to Hamilton’s lead and everyone thought there was going to be a seriously nail biting race between these two championship rivals to the chequered flag. They came in to the pits together for a head to head pit stop battle and that is where the racing finished. 

Now, we all know that every team has the top of the range technology to guide them through such things as weather forecasts. The laughable part about Sunday was all every team sitting on the pit wall had to do was look up to see that it was going to rain again. All the spectators could see it was going to rain again. It was that massive, black, swollen rain cloud that was steadily heading towards the track that gave it away. I’ve given it lots of thought since and I just can’t think what possessed the Ferrari team to send Raikkonen back out without giving him a new set of tyres. 

Massa was all ready having a nightmare with the conditions as it was. He spun that many times that he was starting to make me feel queasy! Surely at some stage he must have wished he could just park his F2008 up and head for home and a hot bath. 

I also thoroughly enjoyed the irony of Ross Brawn calling it just right for Rubens with the tyres, enabling Formula 1’s most experienced driver to enjoy a masterful race to third on the podium. I bet he would have made the right decision if he was still sitting with the boys in red.

Speaking of Honda though, I was really surprised with Jenson’s performance over the weekend. He normally thrives on wet conditions in a race but he didn’t seem to be able to make it stick on Sunday. 

The final word has to go to Lewis and the McLaren team though. It was simply phenomenal to see the boy in action, thrashing and indeed lapping the pants off everyone. He stood in a class of his own. All silly errors and misdemeanours have been well and truly forgotten. Oh how fickle we all are!

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