Former Jordan engineering chief Gary Anderson paid tribute to Lewis Hamilton's skill in difficult conditions at Spa – then predicted that the Championship will go to the driver who plays the percentages most effectively.
"After the race, I called my wife, who told me that she'd fallen asleep after five laps and woken up with five laps to go. She saw the best of it.
With two laps to go, the Make it Happen moment occurred – it started to rain. Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton both stayed on their dry tyres, but the Ferrari didn't look anything like as good as the McLaren. The Ferraris have had trouble all season getting their tyres up to temperature in qualifying, and when they had to slow down because of the rain, they had the same problem in reverse. The tyre temperature dropped faster than on the McLaren, and when you have cold tyres, you have no grip. You might as well be driving on ice.
You could say Hamilton was lucky that it started raining when it did. But he'd put himself in a position to benefit. He could easily have given up long before, fallen well behind Kimi and been unable to pressure him. But he kept to within two seconds, so when the sprinkles did come, Kimi had no room to back off.
Despite later being stripped of the win when he incurred a 25-second, post-race penalty, Hamilton's now in a position where he's leading the Championship and can even afford to lose a couple of points. He just needs to be sure he doesn't make any big mistakes.
Last year he lost the Championship because of some dodgy strategy calls by the team, which he didn't have the maturity to over-rule. We'll find out in the next few races whether he has matured. Will he be willing to score a few less points than Felipe Massa in Monza, for example, or will he put everything on the line and make mistakes?
Massa is pretty hot-headed himself, but I used to work with his race engineer, Rob Smedley, when he was at Jordan, and Rob is pretty cool and calm about everything. Massa will be helped by having another brain outside the car."
