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All Lewis Hamilton has to do to win this year's F1 world championship is finish fifth or better in Sunday's Grand Prix of Brazil.
His only opponent, Felipe Massa, can win the race (TSN, 11:30 a.m.), but if Hamilton ends up fifth or better, he'll be the champ.
Of course, all he had to do to win the title last year was finish fifth or better at Brazil.
And we remember what happened then, don't we?
He went into that race leading the points standings. When the smoke cleared, the title was going to belong to either him, Fernando Alonso or Kimi Raikkonen.
Raikkonen and Massa ganged up on him at the first corner, which threw him off his game. And then the computer controlling the gearbox on his McLaren went on the fritz. By the time he got it reprogrammed he'd dropped to 18th and couldn't make it back to the front, finishing seventh.
Raikkonen won the race and won the championship over Hamilton and Alonso, who tied for second, by a point. But that was last year.
On Sunday, conventional wisdom has it that Hamilton only has one opponent to worry about – Massa. But I say he's got to be worried about everybody else out there because, when you come down to it, Lewis Hamilton doesn't have a lot of friends in Formula One.
Nobody's going to be inclined to give him a break.
Raikkonen sure isn't a big fan. They had a history anyway (remember Hamilton running into the back of him in pit lane at Montreal?), but Raikkonen was particularly unimpressed at Japan this year when he got the jump on Hamilton at the start, only to have Hamilton try to outbrake him at the first turn and run him right off the track in the process.
If that hadn't happened, Raikkonen stood a good chance of winning the race and he might still have been in the championship hunt as a result. But he had to swing way wide to avoid Hamilton (who was penalized for the move) and eventually finished third behind Alonso and Robert Kubica.
Young Hamilton's not at the top of Jarno Trulli's or Mark Webber's hit parade, either. They tore into him just before the race in China a few weeks ago for what they called his aggressive driving.
Timo Glock and Kubica have also been vocal about what they call his "unfair" tactics. And anybody who thinks Alonso (who was Hamilton's teammate at McLaren last year and disliked him immensely) is going to be the perfect little gentleman when Hamilton is around Sunday is delusional.
Finally, if the drivers aren't enough, Hamilton must also be aware that the FIA stewards, who have been particularly harsh on him this season, will be waiting to pounce should he do anything deemed dangerous or unsporting.
So he's got his work cut out for him.
I don't think anybody is going to deliberately take Hamilton out of Sunday's race (well, nobody except maybe the stewards). But nobody's going to be doing him any favours.
Is he mature enough to handle the pressure? I think so – but we'll find out, won't we?
It's actually quite hilarious to listen to people in Formula One talk about cost-cutting.
What cost-cutting? These people live in a world of ocean-going yachts, private jets and multimillion-dollar motorhomes. Do you think any of them worry about the price of gas?
The following story illustrates how out of touch these folks are.
Williams CEO Adam Parr joined that team two years ago and, in an interview with Autosport.com, says he knew "within days" of arriving that costs were out of control.
So, what did he do about it? Well, not a lot, actually.
I have a hard time getting my head around an admission that two years ago the guy in charge of the Williams Formula One team realized that costs were out of control and didn't do anything.
Anyway, last January, Max Mosley called the teams to an emergency meeting in Paris and said the world economy was going to go down the toilet in '08 and they had better act swiftly to cut costs or some of them would wind up out of business.
Everybody agreed that they had to act quickly but, to this moment, they have done nothing. Nada.
Ten months after everybody agreeing they had to act swiftly and nothing has been done shows that these people don't have a clue.
They all talk change but they don't know how to change.
It's highly unlikely they ever will.
Gianmarco Raimondo, a 17-year-old from St. Catharines who's been setting the racing world on fire the last few years, is on track to win the Formula BMW Americas rookie championship this weekend in Brazil.
He's led the class since the first race at California in the spring and has racked up two victories and three other podium finishes.
Raimondo drives for the Concord-based Team Autotecnica, which has three cars entered on the undercard race of the Brazilian Grand Prix.
A driver-development company with designs to deliver young Canadians into Formula One, Team Autotecnica was upset by the news that the Canadian Grand Prix has been taken off the 2009 calendar and is trying to do something about it.
So this weekend in Sao Paulo, the three Canadian cars will be emblazoned with "Revive the Canadian GP" logos. The team's engineers and mechanics will also be wearing white shirts with the same message.
They hope F1 teams and fans and F1 management will see the message and act accordingly.
Want to show your support?
Send them a message at canadiangplives@gmail.com
Several weeks ago, I wrote that Toronto's Marty Roth had put his team up for sale after being told that the Indy Racing League didn't want him to drive anymore.
In the column, Roth acknowledged that he hadn't talked directly to the IRL, that his information was second-hand but that he'd gotten the message.
This week, I received communication from John Griffin, who's an official of the Indy Racing League. He wanted to make clear several things:
From a marketing/sponsorship standpoint, the IRL had tried to work with Roth's team in terms of securing sponsorship.
While the league had discussions with Roth regarding his performance, they did not tell him or any member of his team that they weren't welcome.
They did not tell any third party that the IRL wanted Marty out of the car.
And I will leave it at that.
Norris McDonald wraps up weekend racing every Monday on Wheels.ca nmcdonald@thestar.ca
