Yesterday the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat published an article where Ari Koivula, the boss of the Sauber sponsor Mad Croc told that Kimi Räikkönen and the Japanese F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi are cool but the reigning F1 world champion Sebastian Vettel is not. This article sparked so many contradictory thoughts inside my head that I decided to write a blog post on this!
Koivula justified his opinion by saying that dynamic young people don´t have Vettel´s hair style or body language, which (according to him) gives an impression of a "mama´s boy". And in addition to this Vettel lacks some aggressiveness. Referring to aggressiveness as a charasteristic he mentioned Fernando Alonso being the coolest driver on the grid at the moment. All this talk makes me think... What is it that actually makes somebody cool? My common sense says that aggressiveness for instance isn´t necessarily a good charasteristic or at least it´s a question of how you express it... I agree that in the F1 world you have to have certain amount of aggressiveness on the track, otherwise you just won´t be good enough. But I, personally, find the aggressiveness cool, if the driver shows it by fighting for his position and possible victory in the spirit of fair play. I mean it is possible to drive on the very limit and do your very best respecting fair play, like the Japanese Kobayashi does! In my opinion Alonso´s aggressiveness on the track has had totally different forms! I don´t find it cool at all to show your middle finger to your rivals or have unsportsmanlike behaviour with your team-mate. There has been a lot of writing recently about Alonso´s years at McLaren and though I don´t have a clue what ACTUALLY happened there in the real life but undoubtedly some suspicious action took place there then... After saying this I (unfortunately) have to admit that Vettel is no angel in terms of fair play though I find his image a lot better as far as the fair play spirit is concerned. But unfortunately everybody can remember what happened in Turkey last year, how the team-mates Vettel and Webber collided with each other and all the childish hand gestures Vettel showed after the crash referring to Webber... But he has learnt from that mistake and at the end of the season we saw a whole new Vettel on the track!
You can have a lot of opinions on people´s dressing style or body language... The beauty is in the eye of the beholder like the old saying goes. But based on this I find it a bit funny that Koivula finds Kimi Räikkönen cool, if his opinion is based on the criteria mentioned before. No offense to Kimi what so ever, personally I find him extremely cool but talking about hair or dressing style I wouldn´t say he differs so much from Vettel for instance! Kimi often wears jeans and a hoody like Vettel does, too... But what makes Kimi look really cool in my eyes is his self-confidence! I mean he REALLY doesn´t care what other people think of him (many people say they don´t care but they still actually do...) which is higly admirable. And the fact that he shows his skills on the F1 track or special stages instead of talking to the media about himself all the time! That´s a quality that makes him stand out of the celebrity crowd very clearly. I find it extremely cool that you know what you think and you are ready to stand behind your words not caring what the others might think or say... Not many can do that!
Back to Alonso then. This is only my opinion but to me Alonso´s behaviour both on the track and outside it seems extremely arrogant (and I don´t seem to be the only one having this opinion...). I find arrogance a negative charasteristic, it´s something that can never make somebody cool -at least not in my eyes! Vettel instead is a complete opposite to that, I would say... Especially at the end of the previous season it caught my attention how relaxed Vettel seemed to be though his chances to win the title didn´t seem too likely. Despite all the pressure he was still joking and laughing in the interviews. Personally I have to say I find Vettel´s sense of humour extremely cool. As a Finn I find it absolutely heart-warming that Vettel has learnt some Finnish and given comments on my native language!
But then there´re things like showing your emotions. Is it cool or not? I´m convinced that one charasteristic that makes Kimi look cool among young people is his "cold" image, he´s being called Iceman and not without a reason! So in terms of Kimi it´s cool that he keeps his thoughts and private life to himself and doesn´t want to share it with his fans or the outside world. But now I come to a very contradictory thought... This doesn´t seem to apply to Vettel on the other hand! I found it extremely and touchingly cool how Vettel burst into tears after hearing on the team radio that he had won the world championship in Abu Dhabi... While Alonso couldn´t admit his defeat but instead of congratulating the winner was showing some rude hand gestures to Petrov who had no obligation to let Alonso pass him during the race! Not cool at all!
So what is the conclusion on this: is the reigning world champion, the 23-year-old "Magician" (the nickname given him by the Finnish F1 commentators due to Vettel´s unbelievable ability to pull out the perfect qualifying lap at the very moment it is needed to conquer the pole) cool or not? Finally, all I can say is that he definitely is cool to me! Nobody is perfect but at the end of the day he represents charasteristics and qualities which I personally value and admire. Sebastian Vettel, for me, You´re as cool as a man can get!!! Keep up Your phenomenal work!
P.S. If you ask the children at the kindergarten where I work at, they have absolutely no doubt whether Sebastian Vettel is cool or not! The boys usually fight which one gets the blue car in the Formula 1 game (the blue car is Sebastian Vettel´s Red Bull you see...) And when they look at motorsports magazines and cut pictures out of them they always ask if it´s Vettel on the picture before they cut it off... ;) I know that children look up to the adults taking care of them but however, I still believe Vettel is genuinely cool!
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti