it's coming down...

...to the business end of the 2008 Formula One season and there's still no clear favourite in sight!

the excitement grows, the tension mounts...and next up will the the inaugural night race in my neck of the woods! this coming weekend of 26 to 28 sep, the whole F1 circus will descent like a flock of ravening raptors on this little red dot of singapore...

i was originally intending to be there, but decided in the end to watch it from the comfort of my own couch with a coupla beers and chips instead...besides, i'd rather spend the moolah on other things...priorities lahhhh...

additionally, one doesn't see much at the race itself unless one has the good luck to be sitting near a big screen...otherwise all one experiences is the thunderous roars and screeching wails of the engines as they rev to 18000rpm...and at 300 kmh, reckon all i'd see is a blur flashing by...

vs

it looks increasingly likely that it will come down to a head-to-head between lewis hamilton of vodafone mclaren mercedes and felipe massa of scuderia ferrari...

there's no doubting the skill and precociousness of hamilton, but there's a question over his racecraft and levelheadedness...as can be seen in his run-ins with the stewards and FIA over various incidents in this season alone...if he can reign in all the excesses and focus all his attention and skill on just racing, instead of being distracted by nicole scherzinger and all the accolades being heaped on him, it's just a matter of time before he becomes world champion...not if, just when.

felipe has played a supporting role to the great michael and the flying finn kimi for the last 2 seasons in spite of his skill and it looks like it may just be time for him to step forward and be the spearhead of the ferrari mantle, in view of kimi's strange lack of motivation and speed this year...the little brazilian has oodles of speed and skill but the consistency of performance might just be slightly lacking...he does have to tendency to blow hot and cold, irritatingly enough...

so we shall see...this promises to be a very interesting race indeed...and to add in the uncertainty of possible rain, ooooh yeah...it's gonna be one helluva good one!

who do i tip?

well, my heart says ferrari (being a dyed-in-the-wool tifosi), but my head says the boys from woking, surrey will shave it...