Amr Ebeid (Cairo)
The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix didn’t smile at one of the “Formula-1” champions, as it did with the legendary Lewis Hamilton, who won it 5 times, and after a “bad” season during which he didn’t win no race, the foremost ‘Yas lover’ hopes the Emirates circuit will be an ‘Amulet of Good Luck’ to put an end to his suffering throughout the year, in order to restore the confidence he needs to return to the podiums and challenge the “curse of the grown-ups”!
And as the world knew no more than the ‘Seven Wonders of Formula’ won by Schumacher and Hamilton, the ‘duo’ was a living example of the curse that has afflicted record holders over the centuries, and after the Brits equaled the immortal German number in 2020, when he won the seventh world championship in his career. After a “quadruple in a row” that began in 2017, he received an unexpected blow at the end of 2021 after a controversial accident in front of the champion Verstappen, to be satisfied with the runner-up, before the sensational collapse of this year.
As for the German Michael Schumacher, he initially escaped it after the equation of the “rare five” of the Argentine icon Juan Manuel Fangio in 2002, but he also stopped at the “number 7” in 2004 to be hit by the “curse of the greats ” the following season, which Spain’s Fernando Alonso left in. With a humiliating 71-point difference, Schumacher won just one prize in 2005, after being forced to retire in another 6 races, most of which ended in accidents and serious He started from the first race at the time in Australia, then announced his retirement after finishing the 2006 championship, before taking a step back and going back until 2012, when he finished 13th, before retiring completely, before suffering the famous skiing accident in 2013!
65 years ago, Argentinian Fangio rose to the top of “Formula-1” racing by being crowned 5 times world champion in 1957, but the 1958 championship also saw the end of Juan’s legend with strange events, as he failed to qualify for the American race, entered just two races and announced his retirement mid-season after the French race, won by Briton Mike Hawthorn, was enough to crown him world champion before he suddenly retired, then died in a car accident just 3 months after his coronation.
Frenchman Alain Prost came very close to equaling Fangio’s record before Schumacher, reaching a fourth crowning in 1993, but as usual things didn’t go smoothly, as Prost decided to retire immediately due to disagreements over the extension of his contract with the Williams team, but later reports confirmed that the transfer of his arch-rival Brazilian Ayrton Senna in late 1993 to Williams precipitated Prost’s retirement and, bizarrely, Senna was killed in 1994, a few months later his controversial transfer, and after the worst start in The Story of Senna during the races, he suffered a fatal accident in Italy!
Finally, the ‘curse of the grownups’ continued its jabs to strike Sebastian Vettel after he achieved the ‘Quartet’ in 2013 as well, as his record crop stopped at this point after losing the 2014 championship to Hamilton in one strange scenario similar to the one before it , as the 2014 season began with engine problems in his car which prevented him from racing. The first Australian, and this was repeated twice in Monaco and Austria, and the The German didn’t win any races at the time, and finished fifth, 217 points behind champion Hamilton.
