Hamilton a born loser? Niki Lauda takes to the field to defend him

With the proverbial humor that distinguishes the British people, even an authoritative and serious newspaper like The Times she enjoyed playing down the terrible weekend that saw the English national rugby team succumb to South Africa in the World Cup final and Lewis Hamilton hand over the world title to Kimi Raikkonen due to gearbox problems still to be resolved.

Asking the question: "Is Great Britain a nation of born losers?", the English newspaper has developed a "scientific" algorithm to order all the great losers in the history of national sport in a special ranking, a ranking which includes individual athletes but also club and representative teams from the various countries of the United Kingdom. Among the protagonists of Formula 1, in this special list Lewis Hamilton immediately earned a prominent place (fourteenth), before Eddie Irvine (thirty-eighth), a little distant from Nigel Mansell (eighth), but far from incomparable Stirling Moss (second), defined as the best driver ever to have never won a world title, capable of four consecutive second places - and another three third places - before a serious accident put an end to his career.

Hamilton, probably not very flattered by this mention, however found an authoritative defender in the three-time Formula 1 world champion Niki Lauda: "Lewis has my full solidarity. No one has ever achieved his results on debut: if If he had managed to obtain the title it would have been even more extraordinary, but it didn't happen that way. This doesn't take anything away from his very important achievements."

(d.07)