Post race recall

Out-rage-ous! You can colour us mightily pissed off today. We were originally going to go off on one with an extended rant on the iniquities of Setanta, who have unsportingly refused to share England highlights with a terrestrial audience.

But alas no that particular line of invective must wait for another time as our seething levels of bile have been sent surging by the Stewards Enquiry into yesterday’s Belgian Grand Prix.

Civilisation and possibly the entire world/omniverse as we know it may all be about to disappear into a black hole in Cern (and by the way did we miss a memo, which twat greenlighted that?) but some things are more important than the impending end of the world and civilisation as we know it.

At the end of one of the most exciting Grand Prixs in recent memory, which had us literally hopping and hollering on the sofa, the F1 stewards rescinded Lewis Hamilton’s win with a highly dubious penalty for cutting the chicane.

The story of the race? Capitalising on Hamilton’s early spin, Raikkonen dominated for nearly the entire race, but with just a few laps remaining, the rain began to fall and Lewis, back in the hunt, slowly began to reel in Kimi until he was right on his tail.

In the midst of a gripping old fashioned wheel-to-wheel duel in supremely sketchy conditions, Hamilton and Raikkonen go into the Bus Stop together and with Kimi holding his line. Rather than crash, Lewis is forced to run wide gaining a slight advantage, but crucially letting Kimi retake the lead as they cross the start-finish line.

Then it’s game on again and as Kimi tries to defend, Lewis makes a breathless pass on the inside before being rammed from behind at the next corner. Down the road Kimi overtakes again, before crashing out as both cars try to avoid a spinning backmarker and Hamilton using his supreme rainmaster skills, nursemaids the McLaren home, 14 seconds ahead of Massa for a superb win.

Or it should have been. The perfect rejoinder to a sport often accused of lacking excitement, this was nerve-shredding head-to-head racing at its finest and to sully the result with such a dubious recall does F1 absolutely no favours at all.

It also does nothing to dispel suspicions of an inherent Ferrari bias at its highest levels.

If the positions had been reversed and it was a Ferrari driver standing on the podium, say Michael Schumacher a few years ago, the suspicion lingers that the manoeuvre would have been applauded and the result would have been allowed to stand.

Such highly questionable decisions immensely damage F1’s credibility as the pinnacle of world motorsport.

Monikers

Too. Much. Sport. Not three words we’d ever thought we’d ever write in succession but it’s been that sort of weekend with the Test series against the Kiwis to wrap up, the Canadian Grand Prix, Euro 2008 kicking off and half an ear to keep on the tennis too.

First up then good news for Poland in the F1 and an extremely happy Mrs Spurt who immensely enjoyed Kubica’s maiden win, which made up for the 2-0 spanking from Germany shortly afterward. Alas poor Lewis, easy mistake to make, I mean it’s not as if red’s the universal colour for stop... oh wait

However chief victim Kimi Raikkonen didn’t exactly cover himself in glory either in a startling display of petulance , "I'm not angry but what Hamilton did was inexplicable. More, it was stupid." He’s right of course inexplicably smashing into the back of someone for no good reason is inexcusable, stupid even, an opinion no doubt shared by Force India’s Adrian Sutil. He at least had the good grace to keep his gob firmly in neutral, when Raikkonen managed that feat just one short race a go.

To the Test victory next and a comprehensive caning for the Kiwis with James ‘modesty forbids’ Anderson coming over all shy when named man of the match. “I just managed to get the ball in the right areas and they missed it, which was nice," he said.

Not. Really. Good. Enough. Clearly Anderson has made some great progress, but to really take it to the next level he has to work on one more vital area, to whit his nickname, which is a worryingly underwhelming ‘The Burnley Express’.

Now that is just not going to terrify the world’s leading batsmen and clearly coach Ottis Gibson has some work to do. ‘Whispering death’, ‘Big Bird’, ‘White Lightning’ ‘The Rawalpindi Express’ those are the kind of names to aim for and let’s hope young Jimmy has something suitably forbidding in place in time for the South African series.

Suggestions welcome in the comments field below. We’ll kick you off with Jimmy ‘one bad mo’fo’ Anderson.

Perhaps he could take a leaf out of Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand’s book, who’s in Nigeria to promote education through football and has been given the title of Chief Fiwagboola by King Akiolu.

Apparently it stands for 'character maketh wealth' rather than ‘attention deficit disorder’.