Driven to Success

So, the new Formula One champion is a young black guy - is this a favourable portent for tomorrow's Presidential election in the US? Will Obama be able to emulate Lewis Hamilton? Indeed, will he think he's won the election only to find himself disqualified on a technicality, as happened to Hamilton in the Belgian Grand Prix? To be honest, I really thought they'd find some reason to strip him of fifth place yesterday, thereby depriving him of the title. I was fully expecting to hear that he'd been suspended pending an enquiry after it was found that he'd been making obscene phone calls to Massa on his hands free kit during the race. Possibly saying "I've fucked your grandmother" or such like. Undoubtedly the Daily Mail would then have run with the story, pointing out that not only was he making offensive calls, but by doing so whilst driving, he was endangering other road users, and encouraging readers to complain to the sport's governing body.

To be quite honest, I was half expecting to see some kind of radical intervention to try and deny Hamilton his triumph. Suicidal Spanish racists leaping onto the track in his car's path, for instance. Probably with their faces blacked up and wearing Afro wigs. They're just so amusing, these bigots, aren't they? Even as the race neared its climax I expected to see a police car swerve onto the track. lights flashing and siren wailing, and proceed to pull Hamilton over on the grounds that he was a young black man driving a Mercedes. "Do you have any documents for this vehicle, sir? No. Oh, it's a company car is it, sir? I see. Have permission to drive it do we?" (Although quite what a couple of British traffic cops would be doing in Brazil I don't know - they don't even have the pretext of Ronnie Biggs living there anymore). Amazingly though, the result still stands twenty four hours later. Let's hope tomorrow's election similarly goes off without incident.