An ‘injustice’ is revealed after Verstappen’s title

· by · in Daily F1 News and Comment. ·

Hamilton and Verstappen, a big controversy… An injustice is revealed after Verstappen’s title? Damon Hill was asked to comment on the outcome of the Formula One World Championship and said that the way Max Verstappen won the F1 title was ‘unfair’ and an ‘injustice’.

Just over a month after the dramatic conclusion of the Formula One season, the controversy over Max Verstappen’s F1 title has not abated. Lewis Hamilton has been silent since the 12th of December, which has cast a shadow over his future.

In the meantime, Mercedes is fruitlessly waiting for sanctions that aren’t happening, to be taken against the FIA and more particularly Michael Masi, the race director. Masi, whose decisions were controversial during the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and notably the management of the safety car. And according to 1996 world champion Damon Hill, Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes have reason to be upset.

 

“It’s unfair in itself”

“I think at the end of the day Lewis Hamilton’s fans feel very aggrieved because, and Lewis Hamilton may well do this and Mercedes may well do this, the way the decision has gone has put them at a disadvantage and they feel robbed.” says the former F1 Champion, who to be fair has been at the wrong end of title fight ‘injustice’ before.

“So there’s a lot of resentment, obviously. But in the Dutch camp, was it a satisfactory way to decide a championship? You have to say it wasn’t satisfactory.

“I think it may even have been unfair because if you look at it from the point of view of how the decision was made, it allowed some cars to get loose and not others. That in itself is unfair.

“The result was a focus on the two title contenders and I don’t think you can run a motor race or a championship that way – you have to apply the rules equally to all competitors,” he told Sky Sports.

 

 

117 responses to “An ‘injustice’ is revealed after Verstappen’s title”

    • It does seem that the experts and nearly all the professional racing drivers think there was an injustice. So, why do one or two Pratt’s at the top disagree, can’t they live without their free red bull.

      • It was unjust Veratappen wasn’t 25 points more, going into that final race. In Hamilton’s the do or die British GP, he ‘accidentally’ wheel tapped Verstappen (without any visible steering correction) and the result was Hamilton 25 pt win and no effective penalty vs Verstappen 0 pts DNF, hospitalised plus 5 place penalty for broken gearbox. I guess the Brits just think that’s fair or bad luck. THIS is what is 25 pts unjust and Lewis was not legitimately in the title race.

        • And the famous 4 hours and 2 laps race what the h… Was?
          There we could feel that is something messy at Masi

          • Verstappen left enough space when he was on the outside, but I understand you’re too stupid to properly understand that reasoning

        • How many times do you think max should be allowed to break accepted racing rules.?
          Max demonstrated a win at any cost style of racing showing a disregard for other drivers or accepted protocols supported and encouraged by Christian Horner. He frequently forced other drivers off the track and should have been penalized much more frequently.
          Racing is one thing, but inconsistent application of rules and blatantly not following rules is obviously not fair or correct. Sport relies on proper and consistent application of rules. No rules equals expensive dodgem race. Masi did not follow the accepted rules and should be fired.

          • Max drives reckless and crazy some day he mite injure a car racer if he keeps up driving this way.

          • Anthony… The only driver that actually caused another driver end up in hospital is… Sir Lewis Hamilton.

      • I would have to say not a huge Lewis fan but 100% if the tables had been turned and Lewis was behind Max he would have done exactly the same they are racing drivers after all. X

        • Tell lewis Hamilton and Mercedes to stop crying they screwed Verstappin the race before the final, should never have gone to the final race Karma came calling dry your eyes Hamilton you got what I deserved you deva

          • @Albert Hull – What a moron… So you’re saying MV is not champ… RB car is???
            To all LH disparagers, figure out…
            if LH were given a free overlap of 5 late race drivers, in the last lap of the last race, would you have found it just fair???
            If F1 board wanted a last fool lap, fairness should lead to advise the 2 race leaders to wear new tires!!!
            In fact, F1 were being boring, meaningless, dying to assist, year in year out, Mercedes grab all (driver and manufacturer prizes)… So, if a swapping could be PROVOKED, “so let do it” they thank, for the sake of the F1 race…
            So, Masi can’t be sacked, because he acted with the board’s tacit approval…

      • Winner should be one of the top two race drivers under similar conditions. Verstappen has disadvantage as has to cross the two or three last drivers between him and Hamilton and he cannot cross them. Where is the sport in it. The race manger did correct job. This is what is followed in grid. Everyone is free to score best scores without any hamper on the race course. I feel the race manager did the best for sport by floating norms. Get this silly norm out.

        • There should have been no pitting allowed at this point of the race, everything would have been as it was when the safety car first came out, there would have been no need for endless navel gazing if the race director had followed race norms

        • I feel that the whole controversy of MV,
          being handed the last lap on a plate, leaves the whole race questionable as there was Masi, rearranging the goal posts, as he deemed fit. Lewis Hamilton, is the real champion of the world; Lewis is a champion everyday in life, by being a role model, not just for the young kids, coming on up the ladder, but for all of us. Lewis Hamilton will join the Mercedes team in 2022, lewis will come back stronger, determined and focussed, to be the F1 driver, we all follow and admire. Best wishes we send to lewis, for F1 2022, you are an amazing driver.

      • In my humble opinion the fairest thing should of been to red flag the race and restart it from a rolling start if possible that said it’s all done and dusted so let’s look forward to next season instead of crying over things what can’t be altered let’s just hope FIA sorts their house hope everyone enjoys next season

    • Damon Hill is so far up LH’s arse that he can’t see squat, seriously Damon Hill has been against RB since beginning of season 2021 the last person who’s opinion counts for anything is Damon Hill. Seriously wish he would disappear from the planet please sent him to Mars maybe his opinion would count for something there as for planet earth and F1 keep your biased mouth shut Damon.

    • Remember the british race when lh hit max of the track and nearley killed him and took 25 points from the race that was injustice wake lh fans you have very short memories

    • They need to find the interview where Michael Massey said he would like to see Hamilton lose so he wouldn’t get his eighth championship

    • What a lot of people forget is that Hamilton was all throughout the race hampered by Verstappen winning the Title if both drivers did not finish for what ever reason , So by allowing them to unfairly race the last lap with one driver on fresh soft tiers and the other on worn slower tiers Hamilton wasn’t able to fight even if he had the same tiers He knew that Verstappen would purposely force him of the track as his way of driving has always been ,Look back through many of his races and see how many times he recklessly took other drivers out of the race ,

      • It’s not sower grapes ,Even the red bull team had given up the title if you saw and heard there team manager we need a miracle they got their miracle and with the unfortunate crash being able to change tiers and a second miracle when the Redbull manager was able to persuade the Director to change his mind after already stating that No cars would be able to pass the safety car , say no more

  2. Over the years many races have been unfairly influenced by safety cars and red flags, Hamilton himself has benefited many times. Get over it! Verstappen won the WDC.

      • Well if even Zak Brown commented on this by saying: ”It is the teams who applied the pressure to avoid finishing races under a Safety Car at all costs.” then it’s time to dry your tears and move on.

        • Finishing under green-flag conditions didn’t require protocol breaching, i.e., equally doable with all lapped drivers still in the mix.

    • If Hamilton wants to retire let him but allow the threat of him retiring influence the fia decision about the race result. No driver is bigger than the sport

    • The race was not unduly influenced by the safety car. It was influenced by Masi clearing the track so Verstappen could get level with Hamilton on fresher tyres. If the safety car had just come in to”let them race” it’s unlikely Verstappen would have caught him with 5 cars between them.

  3. Maradonna scoring with a handsball was also injustice. Football matches, finales included, not won because of referee errors are injustice… shit happens. It happens everywhere. Learn to live with it or live learning it. Besides that ithink Masi, under heavy pressure and with the best of intentions, made only 1 real misstake: He should’ve let all cars unlap themselves right away. Had he done that the outcome would be the same but no controversy at all. There was time enough for the extra SC lap then.

    • Or not let any by, it would have taken MV half a lap to clear them but left a fair and exciting finish. I’m sure VM would still have got by maybe even on the last corner. Either of them deserved to be Champion.

      • If it was a right decision then there won’t be so many controversies. Almost all the experts have said it was not the right decision. So why all this arguments. FIA must make sure this kind of situation arises again. All the drivers have worked very hard and have aspiration and ambitions. When you are robed of a victory unfairly at the last lab it is heart wrenching. Move on and don’t repeat this kind of obvious errors.

        • Maybe its because he had extra engines for performance reasons – not as intended by the FIA to replace failed engines.

        • When your robbed of a victory last lap, you mean like in 2008 when, Filipe Massa won the race and championship, then all if a sudden Timo Glock, slowed down enough to Let SLH pass but then sped up again, this allowing SLH his first title.
          So going by that SLH is only a 6 not 7 time champion

          • The race director did not intervene and change the outcome of the race by manipulating the rules in favour of one driver. His intervention only applied to Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc still had 2 lapped cars between him and Max. He should have let either all lapped cars pass or none, that is the crux of the matter.

          • Another way to look at it: In 2008 Hamilton had the luck that Glock did not get the opportunity to change his tires. In 2021, Verstappen had the luck that Hamilton did not get the opportunity to change his tires…. If this luck was caused by weather of referees is not so important. Luck is luck.

          • Luck?? Masi making the rules up on the fly has nothing to do with luck! As for your final paragraph if you could write it in English I might be able to understand it 🙄

          • I’m sure you understand what i mean. With or without the typo’s. Funny hoe native English speakers wantalways to point out that non-native english speakers make errors. I wonder how your dutch is 🤔

        • When your robbed of a victory last lap, you mean like in 2008 when, Filipe Massa won the race and championship, then all if a sudden Timo Glock, slowed down enough to Let SLH pass but then sped up again, this allowing SLH his first title……..
          Massa was Robbed unfairly, so gey over it

    • There was not enough time for the SC to allow all the cars to unlap themsleves. Re-watch the footage. You are plain wrong.

    • A hollow victory remains just that. Until Vesterpen wins fairly, he will be regarded by many as second best.

  5. The fact is that guys like Hill & LH fans would be defending LH if it was the other way around.

  6. After a long season they were level on points so it boiled down to a one race shoot out. Hamilton absolutely dominated that race and fully deserved to take it until Masi brought politics into play and cheated Hamilton out of a win! If it happened the other way around the biased Max supporters would still be moaning without a doubt as would Horner !

    • Rubbish. Hamilton’s extra new engines made him dominant i the final races. The stupid 5 place grid drop rule after the first extra PU was exploited by Mercedes and not intended by the FIA. So outside the spirit of fair competition.

    • I don’t think so. Max would have taken his loss as a loss and moved on to beat Hamilton next year, not whine like a spoilt brat.

  7. Nobody seems to acknowledge Hamilton had already benefitted from his and Mercedes playing fast and loose with the rules all season, Massi and Co were terrified to punish them properly snd just made thier sense of entitlement reach fever pitch in Abu Dhabi, when Hamilton left the track under pressure, missed the next two corners and rejoined in the lead on lap one, how was that not gaining an advantage. All you blinded by SIR LEWIS pls explain why? Because to punish him on lap one would have been blown out proportion like this.

  8. Of course Dumass Hill is going to say this garbage crying unfair and injustice, he’s made it quite clear all season he’s a ham fanboy

  12. I totally agree with Damon Hill and feel very disappointed with the FIA for their slow actions or response, minimum they could make Lewis a joint champion for 2021.

  13. I think with 5 laps left Masi should have red flagged let them all in and unlap and all put new tyres on and then let them have a 5 lap race, he panicked and now we have this mess, if Hamilton does retire then this season will be so one-sided that people will switch off.

    • To red flag the race at that point would have ended the race because it was more than 75% completed and the positions would have have been taken from the end of the previous lap. So with Hamilton having a 10 second lead and 5 backmarkers between himself and Verstappen the only possible protestant would have been Red Bull. To me the question that the FIA need to answer is why wasn’t it red flagged? I know the Austrian who answers to being called Helmut has suggested that in American racing, like NASCAR, they would not only bunch the field up but can also add laps on to the end of the race. But Formula 1 is (was) the pinnacle of world motorsport and has normally been free of the governing body changing the rules on an ad hoc basis, resulting in the mess the FIA have created for themselves. To compound the issue they’ve planned to drag the issue out until the first race of the new season, why? All the teams need answers to the questions arising from Abu Dhabi and there is no logical reason to drag out their deliberations after the 31st January. The teams need to get together and demand clarification of the rules of engagement for the 2022 season BEFORE 1st February. If the FIA aren’t willing to cooperate then the teams should say we will not race unless the inquiry is completed and results finished no later than 14 days before the first practice of the first Grand Prix. Its then up to the FIA to decide when and where the first GP will be held, and they will bare full responsibility for the cancellation of any of the planned GP’s.

      • Bernie has seen it all before….. the teams will turn up because their sponsors will turn off the financial tap if they don’t – and we’ll all be racing – happy or not.

        • Excellent point about the sponsors, but dragging the inquiry out achieves nothing only to make the FIA appear incompetent. As for people suggesting that Mercedes had abused the rules by taking extra engines the FIA started it with changes to the floor regulations which slowed down Aston Martin and Mercedes because of their different design to the rest of the teams. This gave Red Bull a great advantage from the start of the season so Mercedes did well to catch up. Having said that the racing by Hamilton over the Brazil weekend was stupendous and was quite possibly the best F1 race I have ever seen due to the shear number of overtakes made by Hamilton. As I’ve said elsewhere, Masi excluded Ferrari and Leclerc by leaving 2 lapped cars between him and Verstappen, thus denying him the opportunity to challenge and possibly overtake Verstappen. I’m now 66 and have watched F1 since it started being shown on the telly, but my first motorsport experience started at Oulton Park in the late 50’s when my parents took me to see both cars and bikes racing. I’ve subsequently taken my own children to Oulton Park on many occasions watching motor racing with perhaps the most unlikely event producing close and exciting racing was the Citroen 2CVs. Ah well, let’s see what kind of hole the FIA dig for themselves….

          Must say I’m enjoying this forum but it’s a pity some people are being silly rather than serious. Keep up the good work your worship 🙇‍♂️😎

          • He was stupendous at altitude with a brand new engine – and not because his engines had broken – but because as Mercedes stated it gave them better performance.

    • Doubt it. The sports bars in New York City alone were packed with thousands of fans at 8am to watch the final race. Netflix has rendered the ‘old world’ of F1 fans less important.

      • One of the major problems with your whole analysis is across your comments is ‘when might beats right, money takes flight ‘. This truth is self evident and eternal. You can’t make a bad decision without living with the consequences. Essentially the FIA by going against their own rules / laws have changed a sport into a game show. If this left unaddressed, real sports fans, will smell the rotten truth and spend their precious spare time doing something else. The result is lower viewing figures, lost sponsors and collapse of the brand. I personally hope the FIA find a compromise to enable me to keep watching F1.

  14. This wasn’t just about Hamilton and Verstappen, what about Leclerc in 3rd place? If all the cars had unlapped themselves then Leclerc would have been ideally placed to challenge both drivers for the win! So any claim of robbery should also take account of this, Verstappen was assisted by Masi to win the World Championship by ensuring he did NOT need to defend his position and could concentrate fully on overtaking Hamilton. The only way to sensibly sort this farago out is to remove Masi’s interference with the safety car, so when Latifi crashed the result of the race should be taken from the positions at the end of the previous lap as more than 75% of the race distance had been completed.

  15. Lewis was unjustly awarded 25 points for the British GP. In his do or die effort to stay in the championship, he ‘accidentaly’ wheel tapped Max, demolishing his car and sending him to hospital. The result was Lewis’ fault, 5s penalty, Lewis win +25 pts, Max DNF, 0 pts, broken gearbox 5 place penalty. That is a much greater injustice in the championship, not the few points winner of the final race. The rules behind this issue should also be reviewed. Max is the true 2021 F1 champion.

    • Conveniently ignoring Verstappen parking his Red Bull on top of Hamilton’s Mercedes in Italy which could also have seen Hamilton have enough points in hand to have won the title in Abu Dhabi. The nett result of everything that occurred during the 2021 F1 season is that the title will be remembered for being tainted and not the FIA’s finest hour. They need to redeem themselves in 2022 because the world will be watching.

  17. Cheats do win at cheating, I wonder how many people will not watch anymore f1 after this disgrace, it’s like watching the PL football.

    • I can understand different fans having different favorites. But the vitriol directed at Lewis and his supporters (here and everywhere else people comment on F1) goes more than one step beyond. And this didn’t start this season, either. Hamilton has always conducted himself with class, even congratulating Max after the Abu Dhabi fiasco. I have never seen anything he has said or done that came close to deserving the hate directed at him.
      I have yet to see anyone else in any sport treated in a manner that is remotely similar. Well, maybe the death threats against Hank Aaron when he was about to break Babe Ruth’s home run record. Sadly, I believe the motivation is the same.

  19. You know it was so obvious, horner and masi was in it togetther,, they did everything to stop lewis winning his 8th title, it was a fix,, never thought that would happen in f1, but it did, even the crash with 5laps to gp was suspect,,,,, they robbed lewis, and masi must go, disgrace,, i wont look on f1 the same again

    • If Hamilton hadn’t taken Verstappen out in the British Grand Prix then Verstappen would still be World Champion. Get over it guys and let’s see what happens this year. That’s assuming Hamilton decides to get over losing and decides to try again

      • Oh well. Sir Loo may as well retire, cos they’ll just keep doing it if they got away with it…. 🙂

  20. To me Mr. Damon Hill, can’t comment with an independent view, he is a British full stop.

    Earlier in the Season FIA failures impacted Max negative big time. The whole season from drivers, technical matters poorly addressed. Team management ashamed behaviour would balance out to the undisputed 1st time F1 Championship by Max Verstappen. Full Stop ⛔

    Please load me with all the no comments, if you leave the door open as Hamilton did in the last round… Nothing has to be said.

    Cheers JR.

  21. Everything about the final five laps was wrong. Masi stated that lapped cars would not be unlapping themselves then changed his mind and only allowed some cars to unlap themselves. The released cars should have regained the tailenders before the race recommenced. If this had happened Hamilton would have won under the safety car. These are SAFETY RULESand should not have been interfered with by Masi.

  23. It is about time that Mercedes be banned from F1 along with Hamilton for the spoilt children that behave like because they have had their dummies taken away

  24. I’ve watched F1 all my life and get up very early in the morning to watch every race live and to blatantly rob a racing driver in that manner is absolutely criminal. I personally think the Red Bull driver should be stripped on the drivers championship and the title goes back to the rightful owner, which is Lewis. Michael Massy should not be let near another race circuit due to the problems he has caused. The man is a total mistake. The FIA knows what to do, but too weak to do it, as they think it would be egg in their faces. Not happy.

    • Totally agree. Lack of intelligence and clear thinking at the FIA. The same is true of most organisations in the modern age, just look at FIFA. Unfortunately money appears to cause a sport to fail at the fundamental level when the corporate idiots, sorry elite, take over.

    • In fact, Michael Massy acted in conjunction with the F1 board… Because F1 were being boring, meaningless to assist, year after year, consecration of Mercedes… So, they made all to entertain, maintaining the suspense till the last race, where they made all to PROVOKE this outcome…
      There is controversy, and the F1 body (FIA) is embarrassed… But Massy can’t be sacked because he was just a soldier, following instructions!!!

    • This posting is 100% CORRECT. I have gone off ham since all this Black Lives Matter crap but you cannot bend the rules in sport like this and get millions of genuine fans and insult them – FACT. THIS NEEDS SORTING.

      • And the FIA broke the rules allowing BLM shirts – as they have a no political demonstrations policy. Turkish race promoters got fined for calling Cyprus the Northern republic of Turkey on a graphic at a rcae presentation $10m
        So maybe they broke the rules again with the SC 🙂

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