Hat Trick

Alfie has three signed hats from the 2008 Formula 1 season.

Left to Right.

Felipe Massa Ferrari
Fernando Alonso Renault
Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari


Felipe lost the championship by one point that year.

2009 was a very different story, Felipe had a serious accident where his skull was fractured by a part which had fallen off another car. He was out for most of the season. Kimi had a dreadful year, to the point of Ferrari paying him to leave.
Renault got caught cheating and left the sport (coming back as Lotus) , Fernando joined Ferrari - replacing Kimi.

Kimi had a long holiday (years!) before rejoining Lotus (who used to be Renault remember) in 2012.

Fernando has had reasonable results at Ferrari narrowly missing out on winning the championship twice. Felipe has had a pretty torrid time of it, not regaining form since his accident.

Kimi has been stella in the Lotus, winning races in a car which is clearly very good but compared to the Ferrari....? He is clearly very much on form.

So Ferrari has booted Felipe out and hired Kimi. This is great (unless you are Felipe).

So they'll all need new hats, apart from Kimi who can have Alfies ;)

I was given the hats for Alf by a friend who works in F1, I was working at the Monza GP and was miserable that I was missing Alf's 6th birthday. My friend asked which drivers Alf liked and then asked those drivers for hats. They all signed them but Fernando who'd had a terrible year in 2006 at McLaren said he was so happy that someone in England still liked him that wrote a little more on the hat. He also sent a model of his car in a case on which he wrote, 'Happy Birthday Alfie, from Fernando'. We were chuffed to bits, what a lovely chap.

So he's our favourite driver ;)

I met Kimi that weekend, he walked into me knocking me flat. He then picked me up and was massively apologetic in a laughing his head off sort of way.

Hoho

big hat

If you lasted this long, you might like the photos I took that weekend.