Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
One crisp statement was enough to sum up Ferrari's ruthless domination of the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday. And that it came from the most unlikely source underlined its credence.
"If we wanted, we could have gone a bit faster but there was no point in pushing more than we need to," said the winner Kimi Raikkonen who is generally considered to be the dullest person to interview given his penchant for monosyllables.
But on Sunday, the Finn was in his element and articulated Ferrari's pace and power with the right mix of modesty and maturity. The same words from anyone else would have been dismissed as plain humbug or sounded hallow.
"It would be hard to do better than this. Saturday's pole, then the win, rounded off with a second place for Felipe. We are leading both championships, which I am happy about, so the whole weekend went well and we managed to get the result we came for," the championship leader added.
Very true. Consider these: Ferrari's 1-2 procession was a second in succession. The Ferraris were clearly in a class of their own over the weekend. Raikkonen was virtually untouchable and he proved it by scoring a rare hat-trick: grabbing the pole slot, winning the prime spot on the podium and clocking the fastest lap (1:21.670, lap 46).
Raikkonen also tripled his lead over McLaren's Lewis Hamilton - from three to nine points - and Ferrari leapfrogged onto the top of the constructor's table with 47 points. More importantly, Ferrari scored a psychological victory by merely being 'perfectly predictable' as Hamilton had feared at the beginning of the weekend.
At another level, Hamilton may have put his campaign back on track after a poor race in Bahrain, but the fact that McLaren lacked both pace and power was apparent right from the beginning. The high-speed crash of Heikki Kovalainen added to their woes.
BMW, on the other hand, flattered to deceive after three podium finishes in the first three races of the season. Robert Kubica conceded a slot to Hamilton early in the race while the safety car wrecked Nick Heidfeld's strategy when he was running fifth.
All these, I fear, has gone in favour of Ferrari who can now seal both the titles by the end of the European leg of the championship. Much like the Italian, German and Spanish soccer leagues where Inter Milan, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid are champions in waiting with unbeatable leads with a few games still in hand.
I would rather prefer to see Formula One go the English Premiership way where Manchester United and Chelsea are locked in an exciting battle for supremacy tied on 81 points with two matches to go.
Formula One came close to matching this last year when the race went to the wire and eventually just one point separated the victor (Raikkonen, 110 points) and the vanquished (Hamilton, 109).
What a race? What a champion?
Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, like Lewis Hamilton, have their tasks cut out for them. The year so far has not panned out as expected for the golf and tennis greats after a bumper 2007.
Federer, in particular, has had a stormy start to 2008. He lost the Australian Open title in January and since then has experienced more downs than ups with a couple of embarrassing defeats destroying the aura of invincibility.
A victory in Estoril last week was his first of the season, but even that provided only a brief relief as he followed it up by teetering at the brink of defeat against a Spanish qualifier in the Monte Carlo Masters.
Federer may have recovered and reached the final where he lost to Rafael Nadal in the final, but the No 1 is still not at his best with the French Open looming large on the horizon.
Ditto with Woods who struggled at the Augusta Masters before finishing runner-up to Trevor Immelman.
Federer and Woods have been able to provide sparks of brilliance, just like Hamilton, but that can only fetch scant rewards, like runner-up spots or a third place on the podium. To do better than that, they need to be at their best. The sooner the better to make all three sport - golf, tennis and Formula One - as exciting as it was last year.
