At Least That Part of the Track's Paved Now
A look back at the 2007 Chinese Grand Prix
Welcome back to the part of Omakase Formula’s F1 coverage where I look back at historical races so fans (new and old) can learn/reminisce about incredible moments from the past 75 years of the sport.
If you haven’t read my first post in this series about the 1994 Australian Grand Prix, I highly recommend you check it out!
If you want to know about the state of the season so far before Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix, check out my recap of this year’s Australian Grand Prix.
This week’s race? The 2007 Chinese Grand Prix.
Context:
Like Australia, China finds itself at the start of the F1 calendar now, despite starting off life towards the very end of the calendar. And, since Lewis Hamilton won the sprint race earlier this weekend, I thought it’d be a great time to revisit a memorable F1 moment involving the sport’s undisputed statistical GOAT. Though I’m not sure this moment is one Hamilton himself will want to relive.
Through 2024, no rookie has ever won the Drivers’ Championship. And no driver has ever won eight Drivers’ Championships. But what if I told you we were basically one gravel trap away from both of those things happening?
Heading into China (the penultimate race) in 2007, Hamilton (driving for McLaren) was leading a three-way championship battle ahead of teammate Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen (Ferrari). The math for Hamilton looked simple enough: any finish within a point of Alonso and 6 points of Räikkönen would make him the first rookie world champion.1
Race:
In wet conditions, Hamilton seemed to get part of the job done by qualifying on pole, with Räikkönen behind him in second and Alonso in fourth. And things continued to look promising for him on race day, as he found himself leading halfway through the grand prix. History, it seemed, was about to be made.
But wet races, as Australia last week illustrated, are chaotic. And once again, the weather delivered—just not in the way anyone could have imagined.
With the track drying, McLaren made a strategic error (sound familiar?) by keeping Hamilton out, even though his intermediate tires were quickly wearing down. This allowed Räikkönen to take the lead on Lap 29, forcing Hamilton into the pits two laps later. At this point, Hamilton’s grasp on the championship still seemed secure: he was running second, and finishing the race in that position would have been enough to secure the championship.
Until everything went haywire.
The Shanghai International Circuit (pictured above) has a sharp left-hand turn at the pit lane entry (the dark black line extending past Turn 16). With his tires shot, Hamilton ran wide on that turn—and straight into a gravel trap just beyond it.
With his car beached, Hamilton was forced to retire. You can see the marshals trying to help him in the video below, but even if they were able to get the car out, he would’ve likely been disqualified from the race anyway for re-entering with outside assistance. With Hamilton out, Räikkönen finished in first, with Alonso in second and Felipe Massa (Ferrari) in third.
Aftermath:
The incident in Shanghai didn’t technically end Hamilton’s championship hopes: he left China with a 4-point lead over Alonso and a 7-point lead over Räikkönen. But there are those moments in sport where you just feel the vibe shift. And there was no denying that—in what was already a wild season—this was that moment in 2007. A few weeks later, Räikkönen would win the season finale in Brazil and clinch what would be his only championship.
In the long run, what happened that day in Shanghai gets a bit buried for multiple reasons. For starters, it certainly didn’t impact Hamilton’s career moving forward. I also think it gets buried because Räikkönen is a popular champion amongst fans (and deservingly so, I might add). But I also think—and this is why I’m writing these historical dives—this moment has lost impact precisely because it didn’t occur in the age of social media dominance, which has focused solely on 2021 as “the one that got away” for Hamilton.
I can understand why people choose to talk about 2021, but I would argue that what happened in Abu Dhabi that year (a story for another time) was much more out of the control of Hamilton and Mercedes than the 2007 moment in Shanghai was for him and McLaren. Yes, Race Control in 2021 took a very liberal (and incorrect) reading of the Safety Car rules. But controversial stewarding isn’t new in F1—it’s an obvious gut punch that you unfortunately have to take. But the mistakes from 2007 are a lot easier to anticipate and prevent. Had McLaren not stubbornly kept Hamilton out, or had Hamilton not ran wide into that turn, he’d have almost certainly been crowned world champion at the end of that race.
I know it’s also easier to use 2021 as proof that Hamilton should be an eight-time world champion because he already had seven before that year. And I certainly won’t say his career post-2007 would have definitely turned out the same way if he had won in 2007. But given how things turned out, it’s not completely unreasonable to think Hamilton should have entered 2021 with his eyes on a ninth title rather than an eighth. But that’s the beauty (and perhaps heartbreak) of sport. In the blink of an eye, it can create impactful moments you could never imagine.
I will end on a more upbeat (if admittedly still speculative) note: with Hamilton now at Ferrari, it would be quite the fairytale if he finally won that elusive eighth title this year, especially since he’d be the first Ferrari driver to win the championship since…Räikkönen in 2007. And if you think Hamilton hasn’t brought us back to 2007 this year, think again (click on the post to relive both moments side-by-side):
At least that part of the track’s paved now.
Back then, F1 used a different points system where points were awarded as follows: 1st = 10 points, 2nd = 8 points, 3rd = 6 points, 4th = 5 points, 5th = 4 points, 6th = 3 points, 7th = 2 points, 8th = 1 point.
Hi! Thanks for your insight.