A wonderful first race of the season, won against all odds, by Sir Lewis Hamilton.
But it looks like Red Bull have the car to beat this season and I suspect Mercedes are going to have to find a lot more speed if they are going to be able to mount a challenge to Verstappen.
Surprisingly Leclerc looked to be struggling against Sainz, but come qualifying and the race, he showed just how good he is. This remains for me, the key qualifying battle on the grid - along with Ricciardo vs Norris. How these two pairs fare against each other can help us gauge some relative speeds of others.
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Now Maitland, now's your time!
Duke of Wellington to 1st Guards Brigade - Waterloo 18 June 1815
The Monaco Grand Prix and what a disaster. Of all places for Sir Lewis to have problems..... and sadly no chance of rain when its really needed.
A great afternoon of sport ahead then chez warspite: Lewis starting from 7th at a track its impossible to overtake on at 2pm and then the football straight after.....[8|]
Now Maitland, now's your time!
Duke of Wellington to 1st Guards Brigade - Waterloo 18 June 1815
The Monaco Grand Prix and what a disaster. Of all places for Sir Lewis to have problems..... and sadly no chance of rain when its really needed.
A great afternoon of sport ahead then chez warspite: Lewis starting from 7th at a track its impossible to overtake on at 2pm and then the football straight after.....[8|]
At least your sports are not like running in China:
Cold weather in China kills 21 in ultramarathon, sparks outrage
Twenty-one people were killed when extremely cold weather struck during an ultramarathon in rugged Gansu province in northwestern China, sparking public outrage on Sunday over the lack of contingency planning.
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Around noon on Saturday, a mountainous section of the race was hit by hail, freezing rain and gales that caused temperatures to plummet, officials from Baiyin told a news briefing on Sunday. . . .
It looks like Max Verstappen is starting to walk away with the championship.... The car is so fast on the straights and is just as good as the Mercedes at cornering.
WDC no.8 seems a long way off right now for Sir Lewis [:(]
Now Maitland, now's your time!
Duke of Wellington to 1st Guards Brigade - Waterloo 18 June 1815
Verstappen's left front brake was literally on fire when the lights went out. Purple flames were visible. He may be ahead, but he certainly flirted with disaster.
..and so we come to the end of one of the closest, hardest fought and hugely controversial F1 seasons in many, many years.
As I write Mercedes have yet to decide on whether to pursue their appeal. I suspect they won’t – not because they believe they have a strong case, but because they have a corporate image to protect and they don’t want to be seen as sore losers. But either way, I strongly suspect that the FIA are not going to overturn the result – they are embarrassed enough by what happened in Abu Dhabi, without making it even worse.
So congratulations to Max Verstappen, the 2021 World Champion.
Did he deserve the title? Well yes, he is an immense talent and he drove superbly. His car control and his commitment are phenomenal. It could also be argued that he was also the slightly unluckier of the two title contenders – at least until Abu Dhabi.
That said Max, like those other great champions – Senna and Schumacher – will always polarise opinion because of his overly aggressive and frankly unfair driving style. Verstappen’s approach is quite simple; if I am ahead you can try and overtake, but there will be an accident because I am not giving way. If I am behind then I am coming through, now, what do you want to do? Sadly, the FIA has allowed this to continue.
The FIA is at fault here. Max – like Senna, like Schumacher - will do what he can get away with (witness his dangerous moves to defend when he first arrived in the sport). This season, like never before, the FIA needed to set clear limits to what is and isn’t acceptable. But they failed to do so. At the start of the season Max and Lewis thankfully didn’t crash into each other – but there was a reason. Lewis kept giving way. Barcelona was a case in point. Even Red Bull boss Christian Horner admitted that if Lewis hadn’t conceded, there would have been an aircraft accident.
Lewis’ fair approach could not continue. And it didn’t. At Silverstone, his home race, Lewis decided that he wasn’t going to give way and would drive in the uncompromising way that Max had. Max however, didn’t give way…..
The accident was rightly judged to be largely Lewis’ fault and he got a penalty. There was then a lot of noise and hot air because of the speed of the crash, but this should be disregarded for what it was. When the two reversed roles in Italy, and Max was adjudged the guiltier of the two, there was not so much background noise because it was a low speed accident. However, slow speed or not, it was only thanks to the Halo that Lewis wasn’t killed.
In between times (and regularly thereafter), tempers were boiling over with thinly veiled accusations of cheating being thrown at Red Bull by Mercedes and Mercedes by Red Bull. While I don’t think this behaviour can be held against the FIA – perhaps a firm ‘put up or shut up’ announcement would have been sensible.
But what was very definitely a problem for the FIA and specifically the race director, was the total farce of Spa where the race director sent the field out for two laps behind the safety car. This gave a race win and half points to Max when a race hadn’t even taken place. More controversy.
And so with four races left, assuming no trouble for Max, Lewis needed to win all four essentially. In the first of these – at Sao Paulo – the stewards got it all wrong again and allowed a dubious move by Max to go unpunished. They failed to clarify things at the next race and all the drivers were left bemused by what was going on and that essentially their understanding of what was permissible was being thrown out of the window.
This inability by those in charge to get a grip led to the nonsense of Jeddah. Lewis survived every effort by Max to take him out and somehow, despite everything, the race to be the world champion came down to the last race of the season.
Whatever one thinks of any of the above, the fact was, Max had nothing to do with the controversy that meant Lewis was not crowned world champion. That was entirely courtesy of the race director. Absolutely shocking decisions taken, then untaken and…… Five laps to go, Lewis is in the lead and heading serenely to WDC no.8. Then a safety car comes out. If the race director follows the rule book – and he made quite clear in 2020 what needs to happen – then the laps tick down and Lewis is world champion, there is simply insufficient time to follow the process and get any more racing laps in. But the race director decides to take a different approach so there could be a one lap shoot out – except of course there is no one lap shoot out because Max is on sticky soft tyres and Lewis is on old hard tyres. Lewis is a sitting duck and Max wins the race and the championship. Absolutely shocking.
So what of Sir Lewis Hamilton. Well it’s quite simple. Had Nicolas Latifi not crashed with 5 laps to go (or if the race director had done his job), then we would be hailing Lewis’ outright record of 8 World Championships. And, like Max, he would have thoroughly deserved it. It would have been 9 wins apiece (or 9-8 to Lewis if you discount the nonsense that was Spa). But the racing gods – or at least the race director - decreed otherwise.
What was wonderful to see was that despite the controversy, despite Lewis having just been robbed of the title, Sir Lewis was able to conduct himself like a true champion at the end of the race and congratulated Max both in words and deed.
That was some F1 season. Next year it’s a clean slate with a new formula and new cars. Roll on March 2022.
Now Maitland, now's your time!
Duke of Wellington to 1st Guards Brigade - Waterloo 18 June 1815
I have been watching Indycar and Nascar for a couple of years, and I like it much more than F1, because they compete with much more equivalent cars. Yes, the big teams often have slightly faster cars - I am still curious where they get that little extra - but it varies per race and there are always multiple contenders for the championships. What happened in the final of F1 this year is commonplace in those two competitions: cautions, reordering of the field and a final sprint, do we change tires or go for track position? It all makes those races exciting almost every time. Also, no track limits nonsense: the circuit usually punishes who goes off track, or there are very clear rules for a stop penalty when missing a chicane (in Nascar).
In F1 there is always this controversy whether the driver in front has the right of way or when he has to leave room, with unsatisfactory rulings. Most years in F1 one driver dominates through technical superiority of his car and the season is utterly boring, but when there is real competition, like this year or the year Nico Rosberg won, the championship is dominated by mutual crashes, which then lead to controversy. In Indycar, but especially Nascar, crashing is an expected part of the race, but because there are always third contenders who will profit, and retribution is expected, there is a natural limit to the aggression, without stewards needing to interfere.
I am sure all the Indy and Nascar drivers are laughing about the F1 final controversy.
If you want guaranteed close racing then don't watch F1. F1 has never been about that - its about engineering excellence as much as the driving - always has been.
Are Indycar and Nascar having a laugh about the last lap absurdity in Abu Dhabi? Well I wouldn't blame them if they were. F1 was made to look very poor and very artificial thanks to a race director that had shown himself completely out of his depth all year long.
Just a shame it cost Sir Lewis the title.
Now Maitland, now's your time!
Duke of Wellington to 1st Guards Brigade - Waterloo 18 June 1815
As predicted, Mercedes have decided against a further protest. It is the right thing to do, but the bitter taste this nonsense has left is quite clear.
Will Sir Lewis retire now? I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised and it would be impossible to blame him. He and Mercedes have literally been robbed by a man totally out of his depth. Imagine Usain Bolt about to cross the finish line in the Olympic 100 metres, only to be told that the race official has just decided, on a whim, to make it a long distance race over 10,000 metres..... apparently a rule book, that all competitors are bound by, is superfluous when it comes to what can and can't be done by an F1 race director....
But hey ho, it is what it is. At least Autosport make Lewis the No.1 driver of the year and his victory in Sao Paulo is one of the main reasons [&o]
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Now Maitland, now's your time!
Duke of Wellington to 1st Guards Brigade - Waterloo 18 June 1815
; Julia Child
