That Magical Sunday Spent in an Alternate Universe
Physics was never my strong suit. In fact, physics wasn’t even ever my medium suit. Frankly, I understood nothing about it. So let me try to explain how on Sunday sport proved that string theory is real and we all lived it.
All it took was for Kevin Magnussen to park his Formula 1 car in an awkward spot and for an errant tossing of a tennis ball to strike a poor lines-woman right in the throat.
For years, a select few people have dominated the biggest honours in both of these sports. For so long they have cherished victory that the thought of them losing is now totally foreign.
But in some alternate universe out there, those few have long since run their course and have been overtaken by the next generation. But on Sunday, we got a glimpse of that universe. So, this one’s for you Einstein (did he work on string theory in any way? I have no idea).
Of course, those few are more specifically Lewis Hamilton and Novak Djokovic.
For Hamilton, winning F1 World Championships has become like waking up in the morning. Inevitable. Since joining Mercedes in 2013, he has won all but two drivers championships. What happened to the last guy who beat him? It took so much energy from Nico Rosberg to get to the required level he retired on the spot so as to not have to put himself through all that all over again.
Sure, the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Valterri Bottas and Max Verstappen have all chipped away and earned a few wins between them since 2014, when Hamilton truly became the sport’s dominant force. And Hamilton didn’t do it alone, his Mercedes team is one of the best ever. It looks unstoppable as it goes from strength to strength every year.
But on Sunday fate finally intervened.
While Hamilton has usually had the quickest car, there have been times he’s been slower than the others but still something would just go his way and he’d still come out on top. This means he has achieved the truly exceptional formula of being good and lucky. There’s simply no stopping someone with that kind of power. But luck has a way of balancing things out every once in a while.
When he was given a 10-second stop-go penalty, so effectively a 30-second penalty, for entering the pit lane while it was closed, it ultimately led to him dropping to the very back of the grid and his chances of victory wiped out from an almost certain winning position before the incident.
His teammate Bottas had also suffered from a terrible, reputation denting performance and so he was stuck in fifth place on merit despite being in the most dominant car F1 has seen since Michael Schumacher’s great F2004. Meanwhile their only true challengers Red Bull were suffering from a car not suited to the particular track in Monza. A circuit filled with high-speed straights that the Red Bull has historically struggled with.
And for Ferrari, the victors at their home Grand Prix just 12 months previously, they are suffering from a historically humiliating season that saw them at the very back of the grid before both cars failed to even finish.
So once the race restarted following a red flag that caused it to stop, it meant that for the first time in the hybrid era, which began in 2014, there would be a race winner that wasn’t a Mercedes, Ferrari or Red Bull. After four years of just those three teams taking up the six top places in the grid almost every race, finally it was the time of F1’s younger, midfield drivers to step up and fight for a place on the top steps of the podium.
Such has been the dominance of those three teams that fans have begun to treat the midfield teams as their own sport. Formula 1.5. It has its own unofficial championship and fans keep track of the standings to decide a F1.5 winner at the end of the season, with it usually being a much closer fight than any seen for the official championships.
But on Sunday F1.5 finally became F1 as the Frenchman Pierre Gasly won his first ever F1 race. He became the first winner to come from France since 1996, and drove an Alpha Tauri to only the team’s second ever win. The first coming at the exact same track 12 years earlier, their home Grand Prix to add the cherry on top.
The end was thrilling as Carlos Sainz finished 0.4s behind in his McLaren. Meanwhile, just a few further seconds back, Lance Stroll brought home his Racing Point to round off the second youngest podium in F1 history.
The point here is not to say that Hamilton and Mercedes are bad for the sport, but that domination has largely consumed all of the top sports.
This is how we move to tennis. With the disqualification of Djokovic from the US Open, and the lack of Rafa Nadal, Roger Federer or even Stan Wawrinka, then it means we are now guaranteed a first time Slam winner. This hasn’t happened since Wawrinka and Marin Cilic both won their maiden slams in 2014. A whole generation of extremely talented tennis players have been lost to the dominance of the big 3.
While Andy Murray, Wawrinka, Cilic and Juan Martin Del Potro have managed to up their level enough to take home a combined eight grand slam titles. The big 3 have won 56 between them since 2003. It is a level of consistency never before seen at this level of tennis.
In fact, not only will we have a first time slam winner, but also a first time winner who was born in the 1990’s. No one under the age of 30 has won a slam. Long gone are the days of tennis players struggling to win the major honours after the age of 25.
It is no coincidence that these two sports have been consumed by unprecedented dominance at the same time. It is no coincidence that the monopolisation of the biggest trophies is also taking place across European football.
The level of wealth inequality that has been allowed to go on unchecked across many sports has caused this split between the haves and the have nots.
In tennis, the disparity in prize money has meant that those at the top can now much more easily afford to stay at the top through hiring the world’s best coaches and living the most luxurious of lives. Those trying to play catch up simply can’t afford the same level of perfection that the top have surrounded themselves with for years.
This isn’t to necessarily criticise those who are at the top. If anything, they too have simply been struck by the good x lucky algorithm that Hamilton has benefited from.
Because the resource gap between the top and bottom teams in F1 has also been the major cause for the birth of F1.5. There have been dominant teams in the past, but never to the extent that Mercedes have and never to the extent that magical moments like Gasly’s maiden race win have become so rare.
The last such win of a similar magnitude was eight years ago when the Williams team won their last Grand Prix years after their own dominance of F1 came to an end in the mid 90’s. So it was fitting that this would be the famous Williams family’s last race in charge of the team, their exit from the sport going out on its highest note in almost a decade.
And as we prepare for a new Premier League season, the predictions of where the table will lie in May all read with roughly the same six clubs occupying the same top spots that they have become accustomed to taking. The Premier League is simply one of many leagues across European football that has a safeguard controlling the top of the table, which has largely been decided by who has the most money.
So where do we go from here? How can Sunday become the norm? How can Gasly and a 90’s born tennis player achieving the greatest of success become something fans can get used to? More importantly, how will variety reclaim its position as an ingredient that creates the greatest sporting dramas imaginable?
Well, tennis has time on its side. Because it is a purely individual sport, it can rely on the natural cycles of age playing its part and wiping out those dominant forces. Roger Federer is now 39 and nowhere to be seen at Flushing Meadows this week due to injury, an issue his younger self rarely dealt with. The same will soon become the story of Djokovic and Nadal’s careers as their natural powers fade.
But F1 cannot simply play such a waiting game. While Hamilton will inevitably retire, whoever would replace him would simply take his place as the dominant force. Such is the machine-like quality that sees Mercedes win and win and win that frankly anyone capable of driving an F1 car could easily compete for race wins week after week in whatever machine they build. Their resources are so vast and well managed, they are almost immune to defeat.
However, their level of dominance has become so great, so unprecedented, that the rule-makers of the sport have intervened by coming up with spending limits that should see the 10 teams on the grid equalise over the course of the next two to three years. While this is obviously not a short term fix, the FIA have been trying to come up with inventive ways of slowing down Mercedes in this their most dominant year since 2016.
Perhaps they should consider a mandatory 10-second stop-go penalty every race, or perhaps the more logical reverse grid qualifying race that the other nine teams have all publicly stated their interest in.
Meanwhile no end in sight appears likely for football’s increasing wealth disparity. As can clearly be seen by Barcelona’s utter contempt for logic or reasonable squad management still leading to a second place La Liga finish and a Champions League quarter final appearance. Just how long will this monopoly persist before those in power decide enough is enough?
Football deserves its Sunday. But the way things are going, it won’t have its moment in the alternate universe. That moment that suddenly fills fans with hope and excitement that these days can become true, that we don’t have to wonder what worlds are out there to explore. Our one should be good enough, but Sunday may never come.
