Championship showdown this weekend. Will Lewis win his eight title or will Max win his first? All will be revealed on Sunday.
TV Times:
Qualifying Live: 1PM. (Sky Sports)
Race Live: 1PM. (Sky Sports and Channel 4)
Bring! It! On!
Actually I thought he was complaining about them stopping the race and thus RB getting a free pitstop.
Well the finish to this season has been a shot in the arm for something that has been a relative bore-fest for the last 20 years except for a couple of seasons.
No harm that the self-entitled whinging little sh1t Hamilton came out the wrong end of it either.
As conscious of his image as Hamilton is, I suspect he wouldn't want to win it like this, handed to him after a legal battle. Right or wrong would have little to do with it, it just wouldn't be a good look.
I don't know a whole lot about F1 rules but as an outsider looking in the behaviour of Mercedes post-race is not a great look for the sport at a time when it should be basking in the huge publicity it's been receiving this week.
Surely you just need to take your medicine and admit you were beaten? I get there's high stakes and records at stake, but at this stage even if it's overturned it's not going to be the same as winning it on the track, is it?
i dont think it would have made much diference. those cars were on blue flags and would have pulled out of the way asap down the straight. the 5 cars were
vettle former redbull driver and huge schumi fan who wants his record to stand
alonso who doesnt like lewis
2 alpha tauri s . sister cars to red bull
norris. only one to have any reason to hold up max. would he though who knows
Very true, but it wasn't Lewis's decision to bring in the barristers. My actual first thought was that Lewis may even look to break free from Mercedes, he has questioned their decisions a lot over the season, sometimes rightly, sometimes not. Again, no Lewis fan here.
I was surprised and impressed by that, but it does ring a bit hollow when his team brought in the barristers and tried to steal it in the back rooms afterwards, something I doubt they decided to do without consulting him.
Yeah I'd have to agree with that. Have a lot more respect for him tonight than his team (as if either care!!).
Now Toto, who I would have looked at as a very presentable team principal went well down in my estimation with his spoilt child outbursts to Michael Masi. It has definitely put him in a bad light.
I don't know there, I'm no fan of Lewis's but he went up a few notches in my estimation with the way he presented himself post race today. Not easy for him to congratulate Max under the circumstances but he did without question. That has to be commended whether a fan or not.
In the last race Hamilton questioned the tyre strategy in the heat of the moment because Max was on mediums.
At the end of the race, when he won, the first thing he did was acknowledge the call the team made with the tyres.
Christ some people expect Hamilton to be superhuman and make zero mistakes ever.
Earlier this week Max was talking about how everyone is out to get him and yet he got the rub of the green today. Does that make Max 'ungenuine' (lol)?
No, it makes him a human, with actual feelings and emotions.
Like I said, Max wins and people still can't get Hamilton out of their heads, even when he does the right thing like he did today.
Obsessive and weird.
In the last race hamilton questioned and disagreed with his teams tyre strategy, he questioned his teammate bothas. Hamilton may thank all and sundry after the race when he has the chance to rethink and go heavy on the PR but he's as ungenuine as it gets.
I think as it’s clear that they wanted to finish the race with actual racing, it probably would have been more straightforward to start racing again without any of the back markers unlapping themselves.
Ultimately though, would it have made a difference? While it would mean Max would have had to clear them, he probably would have had 2 full laps then instead. I can’t really see any way that changes the result. And I think if that had happened people would still complain and think the race should’ve been red flagged anyway.
How many people in this thread have said the title should be taken off him?
Probably about as many who think Hamilton intentionally tried to kill another driver.
No it was won and lost in Abu Dhabi, the rest of the season was the lead up to an enthralling final race that was let down by dubious decisions of a race director
Last week hamilton said there shouldnt be a safety car after mick schumacher ploughed into a safety barrier and damaged it.
This week he wanted the safety car to continue to the end of the race so he wouldnt have to race Max for the last lap.
Hypocritical nonsense from hamilton. How fantastic that verstappen beat him, mercedes had the way better car but red bull had the better racing driver.
Well done red bull and max!
To all the people moaning and complaining. The championship wasn't won on the last lap of the Abu Dhabi GP. It was won at Monaco, Zandvoort, Austin, Mexico, Imola and numerous other races.
It was nearly lost through absolutely no fault of his own at Baku at Silverstone and at Hungary, but Red Bull got the rub of the green for once today and made the absolute most of their opportunity so ultimately it wasn't lost.
Verstappen has led more laps this year than the entire rest of the grid combined, he's broken the all time record for number of podiums in a season and, aside from one tyre blowout and being hit by Mercedes three times, he's finished every single other race in the top 2, winning more than half of them.
To say the championship should be somehow taken off him because Michael Masi didn't tell a couple of backmarkers to overtake the safety car quickly enough is absolutely beyond comical.
This is an amazing watch, 90 seconds or so of F1 craziness. Love it.
It's dubious in the fact that the way it ended was neither. If it were red flagged then there would have been no doubt. But allowing only the cars between 1st and 2nd to unlap and then not having the complete lap before the safety car went in was against FIA rules.
Yes you can be lucky or unlucky with safety cars and yellow flag incidents but up until this afternoon they were allowed to play out according to the rules.
Funny enough the race director used the "it's about racing" argument and not wanting to end the season on a safety car to justify his decision to Mercedes
Ok if he is only doing for the optics on the podium then I understand. I thought you were just against him wearing a mask
Liberty owns F1 and has the FIA in it's pocket and Brawn has Masi by the balls so there could have been no other outcome today given the circumstances. It's all about entertainment and global audiences now folks. So what if the rules get bent a little.
It's nothing remotely like that. Hamilton taking out Verstappen in Silverstone then winning anyway because the penalty was inadequate was like that. Mercedes taking a penalty for putting a new engine in the car in Brazil then winning anyway because the benefit of the engine was greater than the cost of the penalty was like that.
The closest football analogy to this would probably be a freak deflection leaving someone with an unexpected chance on goal which they score, it's just something that happens in sport. Safety cars happen and allow the field to close up, that's how motorsport works. Nobody at Red Bull did anything wrong, they made the absolute most of the circumstances, made the correct strategy call and pulled off a great overtaking move in the single lap they had to do it.
Seeing the mechanics leg it out at the back is amazing.
If Masi wanted to follow the rules then the race ends under safety car.
If he wanted it to end under racing conditions, then he says that the cars won't be unlapped and restarts the race.
Either way would have been acceptable. What is unacceptable is the hodge podge bollocking he decided to actually go with.
Nothing dubious about it. Look back at where hamilton had huge slices of luck under SC or red flag conditions. Bottas being slightly less useless at Imola and he isn't going wheel to wheel with a Williams and Hamilton finishes 8th-10th at best. Instead he got 2nd because he lucked out
Yes I know they do, but that doesn't mean it's right.
It's about racing at the end of the day and a safety car shouldn't impact the final result so much.
Whole lot to digest after that! Hamilton got the rub of the green a couple times this year and max certainly got it today, does it even up for the season? I'd say just about.
Safety cars are an element of almost every race, teams build strategies around it.
Last week RB gambled by leaving Max out there’d be another stop and lost, Mercedes lost on their strategy this week.
If Mercedes had nailed the strategy, with the car they have, losing the lead they had wouldn’t have mattered so much.
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