The champion's parable: has Hamilton really given up?

Even F1's Mohammed Ali could not withstand the hard, exhausting and relentless blows of the Apollonian Nico Rosberg, a devil disguised as an angel who, aided also by a particularly favorable fate, seems increasingly to be flying towards the first world championship of his career.

Lewis Hamilton in Japan was a melancholy shadow, elusive Ronin, a wandering warrior, alone against all. Distracted and irritable in the press conference, simply defeated in qualifying, controversial with the media, unrecognizable in the first part of the GP.

Lewis' start at Suzuka can easily be misleading; because in reality the Anglo-Caribbean did not remain still with the clutch in his hand in second position, but was still bent over, hands on his helmet, in the grass at the first corner of Sepang. That engine in smoke was a knockout uppercut, the most atrocious sign of an adverse destiny this time, the revealing cabal - more than any suspicion, conspiracy theories or anything else - which this time should fall to the different twin, to the great (ex) friend rival.

And so there was a Hamilton without bite, exhausted let it go among the curves of Suzuka without believing it too much, passed by the others at the start and devoured by doubts, with that hasty and not too lucid maneuver at the chicane towards Verstappen, a sort of cry of desperation in a sort of symbolic handover, sealed with words as heavy as boulders from a Lauda who actually "assigned" the title to Rosberg. The Lewis of the summer months, cannibalistic star of the Circus, capable of overturning the cards on the table and forcefully regaining the championship leadership, the domineering lion who humiliated his rival in Austria, after the summer gave way to a Hamilton in "king minor”, ​​of a lower key, almost with a modest attitude.

Even the handshakes with Rosberg, the low voice, the far too submissive approach to the world championship duel, betray the unconscious self-awareness of the foreseeable defeat, the certainty that sooner or later the moment to abdicate comes for everyone, and that the impact it is all the more thunderous when those who are used to being the strongest fall, those who with instinctive class and innate talent always manage to rise again. Like a wounded, almost offended lion, Lewis seems to have surrendered, accepting the harshest of blows. Yet, we are certain, a burst of pride, a brilliant leap, or just the pure speed with which he is gifted, will probably allow Hamilton to play one last incredible round. The final gong, on the other hand, has not yet sounded.

Antonino Rendina

Follow @antorendina