Courageous Hamilton Aims To Prove Mercedes Faster Than Bicycle

The annual Race of Champions event is coming up again soon - Dec 14th at Wembley to be precise; and it looks to be a cracking tournament featuring the likes of Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button, Andy Priaulx, Mark Webber, Troy Bayliss, Sebastian Loeb, and David Coulthard in battle against each other in the tarmac-shod stadium.
One luminary, and indeed champion, who won’t apparently be taking part in that battle though is Lewis Hamilton.

However - in a genuinely baffling PR event that can only belittle him as far as I can see - rather than competing with the likes of Schumacher, Coulthard, Button et al on pretty equal terms, Hamilton (the current F1 champion and British media darling) will instead be driving a big bloody Mercedes sports car in a race with a bicycle. Seriously.

In PR terms, surely this is an unholy fart of a gesture... Not only does he not behave in the spirit of the event (and the spirit of a champion) by avoiding competing with his peers (when he’s clearly available!), he also competes on completely unequal terms in another event. An event that is basically lose-lose whatever the outcome on the ground. If the sports car beats the pedal bike then the obvious and presumably only reaction is “well of course he beat it - it’s a frikkin’ bike!”. If however he loses, even though the bicycle is obviously going to be a nice one, and be ridden by olympic cyclist Chris Hoy, the fact remains that it’s a bloke pedalling a bicycle. And he’s beaten a bloody great sports car. Driven by Lewis Hamilton.
See? Lose-Lose... Not as preposterously hilarious as when he “flew” posing as Apollo at this year’s Turkish GP perhaps, but still thought up and taken on with a degree of idiocy and crassness that almost demands admiration.

If he could manage to lower himself to compete with someone as lowly as 7-times world champion Schumacher however, it might look really good as PR. Win-Win in fact...