Whilst the finale to the 2021 F1 season was highly dramatic with the competition’s Race Director Michael Masi making a sporting decision many find controversial. Yet the claims Lewis Hamilton was ‘robbed’ are absurd and should be treated with the contempt they deserve.
Having watched Formula 1 since the mid 1970’s there have been many years where the title has been decided against the favourite or the driver many considered ‘deserved’ it.
One of my favourite years that shows destiny in F1 is cruel, was 1974, when the season finale at Watkins Glen saw Emerson Fittipaldi and Clay Regazzoni locked together on 52 points.
Jody Scheckter was a possible champion too in third and started the race P2, while Fittipaldi was P8 and Regazzoni P4 on the grid.
Handling problems saw off the Regazzoni challenge and Scheckter was looking good for victory when his car failed and he retired.
This left Emerson, finishing just P4, the world champion. Fate and Failure played their hand.
1950, 1951, 1958, 1959, 1962, 1964, 1967 and 1968 all saw tales of tight competition and tragedy in the realist terms. And the titles were won sometimes by luck, reliability and/or the best driver.
The line of thought post the weekend’s race from some was that Hamilton is the greatest F1 driver of all time and therefore given the circumstances deserved the benefit of the doubt to rubber stamp his status. Yet, the greatest of all time debate has raged since the end of the first decade of the sport and there are many reasons why the British 7 times champion is not in that pantheon of champions.
Most interestingly, one of the sport’s pundits for Channel 4 and ex F1 driver, David Coulthard, was repeatedly asked in a number of introduction segways to the various sessions televised, “Is Lewis the greatest of all time?”.
Now Coulthard has heaped praise over the years on Hamilton, describing him as ‘vital to the sport’s popularity, ‘the best of his generation’ along with many other plaudits. So it was surprising to see Coulthard evade this question each and every time.
The responses included, “up there”, “statistically the best (inarguable)” and several other high praise descriptions, but notably not the greatest of all time.
Now the clamour in the British media and twitter et al for Max to be chucked out has died down and those voices of the ‘few’ have run out of steam, common sense is returning to the Lewis Hamilton debate.
Is it necessary for a sportsman competing in a given era of their chosen profession to even be able to qualify for the title GOAT?
Without doubt, Mercedes have produced the most dominant F1 works car/engine package of all time and recent comparisons to the MP4/4 and other winning championship cars is trite.
Never has a works team in an 8 year era scored so many pole positions, podiums or race wins; and let’s not forget for the 7 years to 2020 the WDC has been won by a Mercedes driver. The only season during this period the championship has gone to the last race has been when Nico and Lewis were both in contention.
Lewis has not always been the best of losers and to see him in tears with his father before graciously congratulating Max Verstappen was for some as equally surprising as the race outcome.
Driven by the apparent obsession of Toto Wolff, this sporting demeanour quickly disappeared into potential legal challenges and threats that both Mercedes and Lewis would withdraw from the sport due to their alleged ‘ill treatment’.
Can we argue the majority of long standing F1 fans were not relieved to see a changing of the guard? No.
Whether Lewis ‘deserves’ 7,8,9 titles is not particularly of interest to anyone other than his ardent supporters.
Yet the fallout from the Mercedes AMG F1 barrister marching into stewards room to threaten the FIA officials with legal action and the subsequent refusal by Wolff and Hamilton to attend the FIA end of season gala, has left many with a sour taste in their mouths.
This website has suggested the team’s co-owners in Stuttgart have reacted badly to Wolff and Hamilton’s behaviour, having spent literally billions developing their Mercedes brand, it is now being trashed in the world’s media for representing bad sportsmanship.
Many readers may be unaware of the issues surround the team pre-2021. Toto Wolff had been threatening to retire or ‘step back’ and Lewis Hamilton was refusing to sign a new two-year contract by all accounts unless Toto signed on the dotted line as team boss as well.
During these elongated negotiations, Daimler Benz reduced their stake substantially in the team because it is felt they had maximized their brand marketing opportunities and to continue to ‘ruin’ the competition in F1 would be counter productive for the automotive manufacturer.
Of course social media is a wild jungle, but posts suggesting the author would never buy a Mercedes having destroyed F1 competitiveness have not been hard to find.
But it is highly likely we will no longer see the brand Mercedes in F1 soon. Contractually they are signed up by name to the 2022 season, but if there is general agreement by the other teams and the FIA/Liberty media, this could be amended.
Hamilton now faces sanctions from the new hard-line FIA president newly elected for breaking a legal obligation and not attending the FIA gala and even if these are a financial slap on the wrist, it again diminishes Hamilton’s standing in the sport from his achievements.
Top UK sports’ pundit, Simon Jordan, is dismissive of the Wolff/Hamilton threats to quit, and tells Lewis to “Suck it up and get on with it.” He adds if he really wants to right a wrong, he should race and prove his point.
Candidly Jordan adds, “There are far greater travesties, far greater injustices in the world, than Lewis Hamilton not winning his 8th world championship”.
And this is probably the crux of the matter. Hamilton sees himself as ‘beyond’ F1 with the various causes he represents. Causes that include oppression and subjugation on a scale that by comparison makes racing life from the age of about 12, look highly privileged.
The debate about GOAT’s will always continue, but personally I think the drivers of the 1950’s to the 1970’s were in a league of their own. Some years a quarter of their number died racing. They genuinely cared for each other as a fraternity and demonstrated sportsman like grace that for example even saw Sterling Moss lose the chance to be a 1 time WDC by fighting his team mates corner against an incorrect stewarding decision.
Are Schumacher and Hamilton in that GOAT league?
Coulthard doesn’t think Hamilton is.