 Silly Season: Hair today, Gone Tomorrow Thursday January 24th, 2002 By Alan Baldwin
Perhaps, as former teammate David Coulthard smilingly suggested at the launch of the new McLaren in Spain last week, Mika is sitting happily at home, swigging vodka and tucking into reindeer sausages. Whatever the reality, the conjecture reported on the internet and in some European newspapers this month shows that Formula One's silly season is still going strong. But at least it makes a change from the traditional pre-season mind games. While the first screaming V10 engines have pierced the winter air, race action remains more than a month away and we have to make do with testing, new car launches and - as ever - drivers winding each other up. Michael Schumacher is the master, subtly belittling Championship rival Coulthard while younger brother Ralf makes digs at teammate Juan Pablo Montoya. Eddie Irvine insists he is fitter than anyone else and suggests that Jenson Button is the weakest link. And so it goes on, until the racing starts in Australia on March 3. Button Swap Truth can be stranger than fiction in Formula One. Who would have guessed that Montoya would lose to 15-year-old inline speedskater Cecilia Baena as Colombia's athlete of the year? Gossips remains the sport's life blood. Sometimes, after months of being dismissed as speculation, it all turns out to be surprisingly accurate. Montoya has been linked to Ferrari but Button, under intense media scrutiny since the day he arrived at Williams as a 20-year-old in 2000, has been the focus of the month. The Briton had an unhappy past year at Benetton, now Renault, and nobody imagines team boss Flavio Briatore possesses limitless reserves of patience. It was inevitable when Canadian Jacques Villeneuve's manager and team boss Craig Pollock left BAR in December that the former champion would be linked to the French engine maker with whom he won the 1997 title. Less predictable was for the swap queue, which already included Renault's highly-rated test driver Fernando Alonso, to be enlarged to include Williams' Ralf Schumacher. That rumour also emerged this month. The game of hoodwinking rival teams and the media is also particularly popular at this time of year. Last year we had BMW's Gerhard Berger playing down Williams' chances, Coulthard sounding enthusiastic about what was to prove a disappointing McLaren and Alain Prost's endorsement of Argentine Gaston Mazzacane to savour. "He will be a good match for Jean (Alesi) from whom he can learn a lot," the Frenchman declared on January 10, 2001. "I am confident that with the good technical package we have put in place, next season Gaston Mazzacane will be able to show everyone his real potential." It took just four races for Mazzacane to become history and the same number for Williams to win. This year we have newcomers Toyota, who played down their prospects by announcing at their launch that they expect to be slow, already looking faster than expected. Jaguar, less than three weeks since they launched their first "proper" car, admitted this week to a big problem with the front wing aerodynamics. But by then the rumour mill was already grinding away, whispering maliciously that the new big cat might perhaps be more of a dog in disguise. "Contrary to what some press reports are saying, we are not undertaking 'dramatic' revisions to the R3," a team spokesman insisted. "There is little point in people jumping to conclusions about how competitive the R3 may or may not be." Maybe not. But it whiles away the time.
Published at 12:44:14 GMT
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Has Mika Hakkinen shaved off his hair to look like a Finnish Ronaldo? Or has he dyed his blond locks black and grown a beard to escape from unwanted media attention during his year's sabbatical from Grand Prix racing?
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