F1 | Bottas the lumberjack, Kimi the indomitable and Kvyat the avenger: three heroes on the cover

“We can be heroes, just for one day”. Because for some, Melbourne dressed in red, was a melancholy mystery of form and substance, despondency combined with bewilderment, while Others wore the cloak, as if they were the protagonists of a Marvel film, to tell their own version of Australian history, to give an even deeper meaning to the glittering pace of the tires on the asphalt.

Valtteri Bottas thought of overturning prejudices and jokes, giggles and teasing, of winning and convincing. The brave Finnish "lumberjack", apart from his more aggressive look, worked on himself, appeared more motivated and determined at the starting line, gained the trust of Mercedes and his mentor Wolff, and in short he remembered a everyone can also be a winner. Lumiere tamed the Beast, Spartacus broke the chains and took over the amphitheater, he transformed the unkempt beard and a more politically incorrect approach into a message to unified networks: sorry if I exist, sorry if I can also be fast, sorry if I can also zap Carl Lewis Hamilton at the start of pirsona pirsonally.

Hero for a day, but not by chance. And Totone Wolff's satisfied smile says it all, remember how important it is for a manufacturer like Mercedes to demonstrate that it is the car that triumphs first rather than the individual driver. Intelligent Pauca, and Bottas could also try to hold on to his mantle.

But not only the former exist, there is an entire grid that boils by nature, that lives on close duels, on more or less legitimate contacts. In which an indomitable champion has immersed himself to perfection, a man who makes silence the best weapon against written and spoken bullshit, has the icy gaze but the passionate soul of someone who would guide these missiles until he is sixty. Kimi Raikkonen's lightness and at the same time professionalism, the charisma with which he took Alfa Romeo Racing by the hand, the ease with which the performances arrived are surprising.

His superhero mask is a blanket of ice behind which lies the depth and talent of those who still make the difference. “But we could have done even better, unfortunately we had to change the tires too early” because for Iceman it is all part of an extraordinary normality, there is no self-satisfaction for having managed a set of medium tires for almost the entire GP, but rather regret for not having reached higher.

The third hero of the day is the invisible man, the Russian of Rome, the avenger (of himself) Daniil Kvyat. Invisible in the eyes of the cynical Red Bull, who signed him and torpedoed him at will from 2016 to today, a tormented story made up of ups and downs, falls and returns, promotions and relegations. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and at just twenty-four years old Kvyat looked like a war veteran condemned to guzzle whiskey and play pool like in the worst American films, if only he hadn't been given the opportunity to take justice into his own hands. And in Melbourne, in what is a real action of strength, he puts everything into it: class, head, speed, wickedness. Kvyat only took a small point, but tenth place sounds like the sweetest of revenge.

The Russian gritted his teeth and fought the entire race against Gasly, he allowed the small Toro Rosso to finish in front of the parent company Red Bull, he stopped the important drinkers under the impassive gaze of Helmut Marko. Who knows what he must have thought in those moments, he, the invisible one who became the Avenger. He will have unplugged his headphones and isolated himself – as if a transversal team order had never arrived – because in life it can happen that you are invisible, but you really aren't stupid. Hero. Just for one day. But it was a great day.

Antonino Rendina

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