Formula One superstitions: Of girlie names & odd numbers

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Superstitions with sportspersons are as natural as day following night.

Formula One drivers are no different, even though they live and work with state-of-the-art technology.
Giving female names to cars, wearing lucky underpants, affinity towards odd numbers and many more, the speed demons seem to have a strong belief in quirky rituals.

Sebastian Vettel christened his 2011 Red Bull car ‘Kinky Kylie’ after Australian pop diva Kylie Minogue. Kinky did oblige her master by clinching the crown with a dominating show.

“I don’t have a magic wand or stick but the experience of the past has shown that it somehow worked for me. And to be honest, I would find it rather strange to give the car a male name or to see it as something masculine,” Vettel was quoted as saying.

The youngest two-time champion, who has previously opted for names such as Julie, Luscious Liz, Randy Mandy, Kate and Kate’s Dirty Sister, also reportedly slides a lucky coin behind his boot laces before taking to the cockpit.

F1 icon Michael Schumacher seems to be a firm believer in the numbers game.

The seven-time champion has spent much of his record-breaking career with No. 1 on his car. He won all his titles with odd numbers — five as No. 1 and once with three and five.

So when he made a comeback in 2010, Schumacher requested his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg to swap the No. 3 chassis.

While Schumacher loves No. 3, Indian Narain Karthikeyan hates numbers that add up to eight. “It’s just a bad omen. For example, I never stay in the eighth floor of a hotel and avoid room numbers that add up to eight,” said Narain.

During his rookie season with HRT in 2010, Karun Chandhok used to travel to races with his lucky mascot — an Easter egg. His friends had presented the mascot after Karun came out unscathed in an accident during the Monaco GP.

Call it a dirty trick or desperation to win, Felipe Massa wears the same underpants for all his race weekends. “I wear them just for Saturday and Sunday and I don’t wash but, two days, what’s the problem?” Massa was quoted as saying recently.

“I think superstition is just something that is inside your brain. You win because you are doing the best job, but inside your brain it is important to have everything clean and everything ready and that’s why sportsmen are superstitious,” Massa went on to add.

The Brazilian, who narrowly lost the 2008 title to Lewis Hamilton, is following the footsteps of David Coulthard who pioneered this nose-wrinkling superstition in the 90s.