"Formula One will never be the same without Michael Schumacher! This is the end of great motor racing!" a middle aged, bearded German fan with a missing front tooth spontaneously yelled out as the checkered flag fell on the Brazilian Grand Prix last year, marking the end of a nail-biting season and, more importantly, the career of the most successful F1 driver of all time. “A"And with Fernando Alonso joining the useless Mclaren team, there really won't be a season worth watching. Unless you’re a Fisichella fan." He continued, throwing his hands up in the air, visually disturbed by the whole situation. Boy, what a difference a year can make...

Actually, it’s had been barely nine months since I walked out of the world champion's’s paddock in the Carlos Pace circuit in downtown Sao Paolo, drenched in Mumm Champagne and celebrating history as the Mild Seven Renault F1 team stitched up back to back world championships for both driver and constructors. They were the last team to win with the V10 engines, the first to win with the V8s, and had delivered the youngest ever double world champion. They were on top of the world. Now they seem to only be troubling the bottom half of the grid, as their artificially smug PR man walks around the media center handing out yet another excuse from the Anglo French team as to why they couldn’t live up to their own press releases.

And to really put a spin on things, after suffering the indignity of a winless season (their first in ten years) Mclaren finally began dominating the field, only to end up getting embroiled in a Hollywood-style spy scandal that would eventually strip them off all their points and get slapped with an unprecedented 100 million dollar fine. And while Renault may have lost the plot, Fisichella proved that he doesn't’tneed a world champion as a team mate to play number two. Super Aguri have shocked the world by outscoring their senior team, Honda, 4-0; BMW have hammered in their point by thrashing their more experienced former partners, Williams; and a rookie, yes, a 22 year old rookie, is leading the driver’s championship. I'm’m sorry…MMichael who?

Welcome to round ten of the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship. And while I'm sure you are reading this story with the benefit of knowing how this incredible season has eventually panned out, for those inside the paddock, there was only one story on every journalist’s fingertips as they pounded the keys of their laptops: Lewis Hamilton. Never before has any other driver captured the hearts and minds of the fans in his first season.

A ten year prodigy of Mclaren’s driver development program, Lewis Hamilton has had the most successful start in the sport's’s illustrious history, chalking up an amazing 9 podium finishes in 9 races including an emotional pole position in his home race only a couple of weeks earlier.

But it was a fairytale that was just about to be gate crashed.

Because whether he wins this year's’stitle race or not, the Nurburgring will always be a pivotal point for Lewis Hamilton. It all began in Q2 as he suffered his first serious accident in a timed session, crashing into the barriers at approximately 175mph, which started a chain of events that would give the Prost and Senna feuds a run for media mileage. Visibly shaken, the young British rookie was stretchered off the track and had to line up the following day in an unfamiliar 10th place.

As I stood on the inside of turn 1, watching the start from a Kangaroo TV ?a portable interactive TV that hung around my neck, Hamilton charged down the inside and slotted his Mclaren in a provisional 4th place before getting caught up in the mess of a BMW team-mate rivalry and slipping back down the order after picking up a puncture on his left rear tire. His next lap on rain tires was on the edge, riding curbs and dancing on three wheels around some of the more treacherous corners in this deeply storied race track, only to end up driving faster than lady luck could fly.

The skies had opened up like butterfly intakes on full throttle, dumping about a month’s worth of rain onto the race track, and ended up setting the stage for the most exciting race this season. In absolutely torrid conditions, and less than a minute apart, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Adrian Sutil, Nico Rosberg and Scott Speed started flying off the track into the gravel trap outside turn 1 like little Matchbox cars being thrown around by a hyperactive kid with an attention deficit disorder.

Anthony Davidson then locked up at lake one, sorry, turn one, but stopped his car just before the gravel and was able to make it out. The safety car was immediately dispatched to slow down the race, only to have to quickly speed off around the corner when he noticed Vitantonio Liuzzi’s Torro Rosso filling up his mirrors as the flamboyant and heavily pierced Italian driver came into turn one backwards at 150mph, also ending up in the gravel trap, turning it into one of the world’s most expensive parking lots.

In a matter of minutes, the gravel trap outside turn one had swallowed almost a third of the entire grid and forced the race to be red flagged. David Coulthard, Rubens Barrichello, Nico Rosberg and Alexander Wurz all limped back into the pits after getting tangled up in separate clashes and proceeded to line up on the starting grid for the third time that day, waiting for the decision from race control. To think that all of this chaos happened in just 3 laps.

At around 2:20pm local time, the rain eventually subsided and the race was restarted ?making it the first Grand Prix to be red-flagged and restarted since Spa in 2001, when a crash by Luciano Burti stopped the race but was restarted after repairs to the wall. Amazingly, if not controversially, Hamilton had kept his engine running and was hoisted back on the circuit by some friendly Nürburgring Marshalls and continued a lap down.

Formula One debutante, Markus Winkelhock, who was filling in for the embattled Christijan Albers, who was booted out of his Spyker racing seat after a default of payment from one of his personal sponsors, stunned the crowd as he led his home grand Prix on his first ever outing in an F1 car. His lead would only last up until lap 7, under the sedate speed of the safety car, but by doing so, he managed to etch himself into Formula One history by being the first driver to go from last to first on the grid in his debut race, as well as adding a sentimental footnote to his career, considering that the Nurburgring marked his father’s last F1 race before suffering a fatal crash during the Budweiser 1000 km World Sportscar Championship event, driving a customer Porsche 956.

It was business as usual on the race track and normalcy seemed to have returned once the weather stabilized. Massa led the race with Fernando a comfortable second. Pole sitter, Kimi eventually retired from a strong 3rd position after a hydraulics failure in his Ferrari, putting Webber in a podium finishing position. Just when we thought we could finally exhale, after witnessing the most incredible race in recent history, the rain started to fall again. A vulnerable Massa started to succumb to the 2X world champion who was closing the gap to first. Alonso managed to get the crowd on its feet and bring Jean Todt to his knees as he passed Massa on lap 56 in dramatic fashion around the outside of turn five, winning the European Grand Prix for the second time while his team mate, Lewis Hamilton, failed to score a single point.

This chewed down Hamilton’s lead in the driver’s championship down to just 2 from a whopping 12 point advantage after Silverstone and more importantly, saw the new Lewis emerge. Gone are the days of, “I could learn a lot from Fernando?This is a dream come true... I really don’t expect to win…etc?From this moment on, the gloves came off, and Lewis shed his nice-guy-rookie image and started taking on his world champion team mate psychologically as well. Both on and off the track.

The following race in Hungary saw history made again, when Lewis Hamilton defied the team that nursed him through and funded his entire career, by disobeying direct team orders during a qualifying session. This saw the world champ retaliate by ‘blocking?his team mate in the pits and ruining his chances for a super pole lap. Alonso eventually took the pole but was then demoted 5 spots down to sixth after the FIA ruled that he had impeded Hamilton.

The feud became public, which led to Fernando refusing to share his set ups with Lewis and allegedly demanding number one status in the team from Ron Dennis. From that moment on, Lewis never outscored Alonso. Until Japan, that is, where the rookie drove like a world champion and actually started behaving like one, too. His safety car restarts were more aggressive than anything he may or may not have said over the radio to his team boss after the Hungarian qualifying when he reportedly swore at Ron Dennis, causing Alonso to almost run into the back of him at one point.

It was also the first time we’ve heard Lewis speak out so harshly about Fernando after the race, telling the press that he doesn’t want Alonso in the team next year ?a clear sign that the rookie feels he will be champ this year. Because if there was any doubt, Lewis would want Fernando to remain in the team, if not for any other reason except to have the opportunity to beat him fair and square in equal machinery. This way, if Lewis wins and can pick a new team mate, he can always say he beat the man who beat the best and the public would forever be robbed of a rematch.

So, as we head into the last two races of this spectacular season, I flash back to this time last year when my middle-aged, hairy German friend declared the end of Formula One as we, the fans, have come to know it and I smile. What a difference a year makes?


From a spy scandal that would rival a Hollywood blockbuster, to Kubica’s horrific accident in Montreal and his battle with Massa in Fuji, to the rise and fall of the most incredible rookie driver ever and his much celebrated, double World Champion team mate (or the other way around), to the closest championship battle we’ve had in years with a realistic three way battle, to thriller races in Fuji and Nurburgring where Scott Speed ended up getting into a physical altercation with one of his team managers after crashing out of the race and eventually being fired…no matter which way it turns out, you couldn’t have written a better script if you tried. The only difference is that this is fact, not fiction ?which is good, because fiction needs to actually make sense.