MIKA SALO"FLYING FINN

What Sarah Palin can learn from Mika Salo

Posted by tendutv in Elections, Featured Articles, Politics on 10 27th, 2008 | no responses

My efforts to stay away from politics fail me again. One of the current memes on the campaign trail is the conflict between the Palin and McCain camps (story originally found on Politico). In a nutshell, the storyline goes that Palin knows she’s on a sinking ship, and has started focusing more on her own political future.

Mika Salo was a fairly non-descript Formula 1 driver who had a sporadic career in the sport between 1994 and 2002. Although racing in motorsport’s most prestigious class, which meant he surely had real skills, he never accomplished anything significant. In 1999, he found himself without a “seat” (having failed to finish 20 of his previous 36 races), when, midway through the season, Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher, perhaps the greatest driver of all time, broke a leg during a crash, and Salo was hired to fill his seat.

Former Ferrari Driver Mika Salo. Can you see Finland from Alaska?

For those of you unfamiliar with the sport, short-term success in Formula 1 (eg. the ability to perform well in any given race), is almost completely dependent on the performance of the car. Of the 11-12 competing teams in any given season, between 2 and 4 have a real shot at the title, while the rest have varying expectations over their ability to scoop up crumbs. Bottom line, take a middling driver, put him in the fastest car on the track, and whereas he may not win , he’ll certainly out perform. In 1999 (and 2000,01,02,03 and 04), Ferrari was the fastest car on the track.

In Salo’s fifth race, he finished second, the best result of his career. In a post-race interview, he proceeded to extol the virtues of his own driving, his own performance, and continued to fluff himself to startling proportions. If you’ve ever watched auto racing at any level, you know that the first rule of thumb of the post-race press conference is “When you succeed, thank the crew first.”

The thing about Ferrari F-1 cars at this time was that they were not only fast, but they were reliable. They rarely failed to finish a race, and when they did, it was usually the result of collision, as opposed to mechanical failure. Yet, watching Salo open his mouth, it became apparent that he would be eating his words. In the following race, the European Grand Prix, his brakes failed and he was forced to retire from the race. Schumacher returned for the last two races of the season, and Salo raced two more years for bottom-table teams before fading out of F-1.

So, here we have Sarah Palin, climbing on to the podium for the first time, thinking that she’s a champion driver just because she’s driving the fastest car. But, she’s pissing off her crew. A Ferrari is only a Ferrari when the mechanics that build and maintain it decide make it perform like a Ferrari. What Palin has forgotten, is that when a Ferrari is broken down on the side of the road, it gets outperformed by a Ford Pinto. Unfortunately for her, Sarah Palin is no mechanic.

End tangent.