Massa and Lewis's issues lie elsewhere

Oh dear. God bless Massa and Hamilton. Without their latest contretemps during the Indian Grand Prix, the first-ever race at the Buddh International Circuit was in serious danger of becoming the least memorable race of the whole season.

Instead, while the race itself may not fester long in the memory, the latest round of Hamilton and Massa's bizarre rivalry will ensure that whenever the 2011 Indian GP is invoked in the future, people will be able to say, "Oh yeah, that was one of the races where Felipe and Lewis drove into each other!". Which is something, at least.

The Hamilton/Massa rivalry has been a slightly odd one from the start, a spat apparently born from a combination of coincidental clashes on track and a monumental lack of social skills off it. Hamilton's revelation that the Brazilian had basically stopped talking to him recently explained how the bad blood between the pair was being allowed to linger, but did little to elevate the fall-out beyond that of a rather childish playground argument.

For that reason, it is a rivalry that is impossible to take seriously. There is none of the title-contesting venom of Senna/Prost and none of the intra-team politics from Alonso/Hamilton. All there is to get excited about is a string of hapless moments of driving, from Hamilton's sensationally-optimistic overtaking attempt at Monaco through to their most recent clash in India, which was an exercise in two drivers failing to do what they should have done to avoid contact.

And while it is fun to watch the almost-inevitable collisions as they happen, and entertaining to hear some of the ramblings post-clash - "Here after the one minute silence he was at my side and then he just said, 'have a good race'. So this is trying to what? Have a good race?" Massa growled this weekend, trying to read far too much into Hamilton's awkward attempt at reconciliation - the reactions of both drivers shows that both have bigger issues on their mind than meets the eye.

Massa is a driver under pressure from all sides. While his 2012 seat at Ferrari is secure, there is more than a feeling that the team are beginning to lose faith and patience in a driver now sitting some 129 points behind his own team mate in the standings. Somehow, the Brazilian needs to turn his career around in double-quick time if he is to remain in a frontrunning seat beyond next season.

So it is, of course, in his interest to play up the inhumanity of the incidents. The more attention that is lavished on some sort of apparent desire from Hamilton to drive him off the track at every race, the less attention goes on how he has been driving poorly for the best part of two years, and actually seems to be getting worse (the only driver not to learn from Massa's suspension-breaking meeting with the kerbs in qualifying was, apparently, Massa himself).

Hamilton's reaction to the ongoing debacle is less one of outraged hysteria, and more one of sullen self-reflection. "I just can't apologise enough to my team for the negativity that surrounds me nowadays," he mourned after his latest tangle, "I just have to try and keep my head up and recover from this for the next race."

The simple fact that Hamilton is constantly getting involved with Massa is part of the wider issue of his current situation. By all rights, he should be well up the road from the Brazilian, challenging for podiums and wins. Instead, he keeps ending up down the order, squabbling about for results that should really be below his station.

Again, in India, he only had himself to blame for the fact that he was fighting with Massa in the first place, after his FP1 yellow flag error left him taking a grid drop penalty. Without that, he'd have been starting on the front row of the grid, trying to take the fight to the new world champion. Instead, he was back in the pack, scrapping with a waning talent in a slightly cack Ferrari.

For both drivers then, the issue that they are facing is not with each other, but with themselves. While Hamilton is hardly fighting for his career, as Massa is, he is fighting to rediscover his spark, and the sort of driving ability that he showed in 2007 and 2008, when he appeared to be set to dominate the sport over the next few years.

Since then, he has been completely overshadowed by the rise and rise of Sebastian Vettel, while this season he has been eclipsed even by his own team mate thanks to a litany of driving errors. The fact that most of them have involved Massa is entirely incidental.

So while the media coverage of Hamilton v Massa will probably continue for a good while (there was little else to focus on in the India race, of course), both drivers could do with forgetting their perceived problems with each other, shaking hands and getting over it, and then focusing on their own issues first.

Then again, given that we're off to Abu Dhabi next, maybe they can save us another collision for then as well, just so we'll have something to talk about.

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