By David Mirsky

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 6/13/08 — Living large in the international spotlight, you’d think a young Englishman, and a well bred young American woman would be able to control their manners as well as their egos.  Have the words such as humility and politeness been removed from Lewis Hamilton and Danica Patrick’s vocabulary? ..it might seem so.

Whenever you’re involved in a competitive sport, whether it’s a team type of sport, or an individual sport, you’re going to be confronting yourself for the most part.  You’re competition is usually someone similar to you, and most of the time, with similar talent.  You don’t rise to the top level of your sport without being a great something. 

You’ve got talent, you’ve got ambition, and you’ve got something few have to be in your league. Along with this observation, you’re usually young, and have a knack for being something of an egotist.  You might think of these athletes as arrogant psychos with a talent…and most of them are. Even team sports such as basket ball and base ball have their fair share, even though their success does rely on their team mates. 

Solo sports, such as tennis, golf, motor racing, and boxing tend to breed your better egotists.  They have no one else to share their loses or successes with.  Although, most of the time they will thank god for their victories, but seldom blame themselves for their defeats. 

They will make sure to let everyone know that they were, as always, perfect, and if it weren’t for “whatehisname”, they would have most likely won whatever it was everyone else was trying to win. Their egos will not allow them to promote failure to any audience; including themselves…they will justify failure by never admitting to it.  It comes with being perfect after all.

We’ve seen Danica Patrick, a talented young Indy Car drive, who has proven that she can hold her own with her male counterparts on the race track.  Although I find it amusing watching Danica get pissed off.  She is a girl after all, and girls can wear their emotions on their sleeves.  At this year’s Indy 500 race, after a pit lane mishap that took Danica out of the race, we watched Danica, with fire in her eyes, heading towards the pit area of the car and driver who cause the incident, and subsequent retirement of Danica from the race. 

Honestly, what the hell is she thinking anyway?  This cute, 25 year old female is all of 5’2” tall and weighs in at a whopping 102 pounds.  Danica, I had a steak the other night that weighs more…just what were you going to do had you had the chance to come face to face with your foe?  Be a girl and yell at him?  Well, unless you’ve got something a guy wants, there’s no way any man is going to stand there and listen to your whine.  Why?  Or, were you going to slap him?  Perhaps you were hiding a black jack or mace in your pocket…or even a small machine gun you’ve been secretly hiding for such an occasion?  It would have been a bad choice to physically confront this guy. 

I’m pretty sure he could have kicked your ass…then again; you have provided us with some unexpected moves once in a while. I do have one confession though…I love watching Danica when she gets stomping mad.  She sort of reminds me of Shirley Temple stamping her feet when she got mad…adorable comes to mind. 

And this isn’t only about girls…there are guys out there who are either very stupid, or want to act like morons, or think if they whine like a little kid, they can get what they want because it worked on their parents.

This past weekend in Montreal, at the Formula 1 race, young British driver, Lewis Hamilton fresh off his victory at the Monaco Grand Prix did one of the dumbest things a professional race car driver could do…he ran into a parked car. Current World Champion, Kimi Raikoennen was stopped at a red light at the end of the pit lane.  The race officials had issued the red light order, which of course means STOP.  Well, as it turns out, Hamilton ran into the back of Kimi’s car, causing enough damage to take Kimi’s car out of the race as well as himself.  Talk about stupid, this was it. 

Okay…in this type of sport, accidents will and do happen.  It’s the nature of this very fast and dangerous sport. You rarely see something like this happen at this level of motor sport racing.  Formula 1 drivers are considered to be the elite race drivers in motor sports, and for the most part, they are.  There are only 22 of these drivers on the planet…so it is a tough profession.  Getting back to Lewis and his crash…I will admit that this sport is filled with all sorts of mishaps, accidents, and of course, egos.  We can’t forget about egos.  And, F1 being racing’s top tier, so comes the top tier for egos.

At the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, Kimi apparently suffered a mild brain cramp and accidently mis-judged the braking ability of his Ferrari, and ran into another car late in the race that was running in 4^th place. And worse was the young driver who had never finished an F1 race in the top 10.  After all, this was Monaco, the ultimate race anywhere.  Well, Kimi knew he blew it for himself, and for the young driver he crashed out of the race.  Kimi was first to apologize to the other driver, and from all appearances, was truly upset about it.  Its one thing to make an error and damage yourself, but no racer, no true competitor wants to hurt another driver.

However, here comes that whiney thing again.  Getting back to the Canadian Grand Prix, and Hamilton’s idiotic mistake hitting Kimi at a red light, I couldn’t help notice Kimi’s demeanor.  He quickly got out of his car, and immediately headed back towards his pit.  As he passed Hamilton, Kimi motioned for Hamilton to look at the red light behind him…red means stop.  Hamilton paid little attention to Kimi, as he tried to become invisible.  His ego has a problem with this, and all the people looking on.  Okay, I can understand his feelings here.  This perfection of a driver, a 23 year old millionaire who had just won the greatest race in the world had and made one of the worse mistakes ever.  So what happens now?

Hamilton has broken the rules…you’re not supposed to run into other drivers…especially parked ones, stopped by the race stewards…with that big, bright red light right in front of everyone.  So there’s nothing else to do.  He’s given a punishment.  He will start 10 places back from where he qualifies from at the next race in France.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in Formula 1, it’s a matter of winning a race.   So Lewis has spent the last couple of days whining about his punishment for running into another car, and taking that driver out of the race and points.  Poor Lewis thinks he’s getting a bad deal here, just because his stupid actions could have caused some serious harm to the other drivers.  Just what should your punishment be, Lewis?  How about paying for the damage to the car you hit…and trust me, Ferraris aren’t cheap to fix. Should you get some sort of physical punishment, what about a million dollar fine now that you have the money. 

You see….prima donnas like Hamilton think they’re above it all…its not their fault, its their ego taking over…it’s a built in protection device that can take years to learn.  At least Danica was ready to “Man up” in the pits, whereas you wait until you’re out of arm’s reach before you make your opinion heard.  In all of this, Hamilton still thinks that he’s a victim, and that he’d done nothing wrong…therefore, why would he apologize for something he didn’t do.  I mean really, what the hell was that red light doing on in the pit lane anyway.  And why should he have to start the next race with a 10 grid penalty.  Just because you failed to respond to the red light in front of you and crashed into another competitor, taking him out of the race, why should you have any remorse, or accept any responsibility to your actions.  I would really hate to see Hamilton if the situation was reversed.  I’m sure he’d do his best Danica impersonation, and seek justice.  Perhaps cutting off a hand would be to his liking.

What I’m really trying to say is…Danica…know what you can get away with, and know you’re enemies, and learn that in racing, there are mistakes…its racing.

And Hamilton…what I guess I’m trying to say is…Shut the hell up!  Stop being such a little bitch…stop whining.  Man up with this…its called racing and shit happens.  Take responsibility for your actions.  Yes, you are a good driver…you’re not the best, at least not at this moment anyway…and for God’s sake….stop whining.  This is racing…its hard enough to win without hearing your whining all the time.  And learn that being an arrogant jerk is a bad thing…race drivers have seldom won a Nobel prize or influenced society, or cured cancer….they entertain us…they’re great to watch, and I love it…but don’t ever forget, you’re a man, or woman first…then a driver.  So watch it….we’ll all be watching you just a little bit closer.  Thank you.