(Photo: LAT Images via Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 Team)
By Aaron Bearden
It’s been four days since the end of a controversial Formula 1 season finale at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, yet the dust is only just now starting to settle.
Mercedes’ protests of the finish after the event were all thrown out. The Brackley squad has since dropped its potential appeal against the handling of the race, making the results official and Max Verstappen’s championship confirmed.
So at this stage, everything for the record books has been determined. But was it all fair? Was Abu Dhabi a suitable ending to a dramatic F1 season?
Those are difficult questions to answer.
Many race fans have been disappointed by the way the finish played out. But to a certain extent, this feels like the only way the year could have ended.
In a hotly-contested championship that featured two teams pushing every facet of the rulebook (and each other) to the extremes, it’s almost fitting that the drivers’ title came down to decisions from FIA race director Michael Masi, making calls as both Mercedes and Red Bull pleaded in his ear, as much as they did the actual strategy on-track.
From the non-race at Spa-Francorchamps that still awarded half-points to the NASCAR Overtime-esque finish at Baku and do-or-don’t penalize decisions in Saudi Arabia and even Abu Dhabi itself, race control and the stewards played a critical role in the 2021 season from start to finish.
To their credit, the decisions never seemed overly biased toward either driver. That fans of both Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen feel aggrieved in total on the year (just check Twitter if you don’t believe me) is an indicator that both sides may have suffered fairly equally from calls throughout the season.
As for Sunday’s finale, the timing of the accident was as much, if not more of an issue than the way the ensuing safety car period was handled.
Thanks to Sergio Perez’s slowing of Hamilton in the middle stages of the race, Verstappen and Red Bull were able to stay within striking distance of the seven-time champion as the checkered flag drew near. That meant that when Nicholas Latifi shunted and yielded a safety car in the final laps, Mercedes couldn’t risk pitting Hamilton because Verstappen could stay out and get ahead of him – a frightening scenario given that Verstappen had shown how aggressive he was willing to drive and Hamilton needed to both score points and finish ahead of him in order to overcome Verstappen’s tiebreaker and beat him.
On the other end, Red Bull had enough of a gap behind them to make what was essentially a free stop for soft tires, giving Verstappen a key advantage for the ensuing restart once lapped traffic was removed from the equation.
This is the sort of scenario you see often in American racing with NASCAR and other tours, which feature traditional caution periods that bunch up the lead-lap cars before ensuing restarts. When a caution comes at the end of a race, the leader is often left as a sitting duck. No matter which direction they choose strategy-wise, at least a few of the trailing cars tend to choose the opposite to give themselves a chance to win.
Normally in F1 it’s not an issue, because the lead car is so far ahead that they can stop with little-to-no risk and put themselves in the best position for the finish. But so close was this year’s championship fight that neither Hamilton or Verstappen found themselves in that position often.
Neither organization did anything wrong in the finale. Mercedes and Red Bull’s drivers raced hard, but fair. There was no significant contact and everything was decided on-track. One just got dealt a better hand than the other in the end. That’s racing.
The ones that have a real complaint about fairness are the lapped drivers that found themselves behind Verstappen at race’s end, as well as the drivers that had to work around them on the final lap.
Daniel Ricciardo was the leader among that group, having pitted for soft tires just as Verstappen had when the safety car was put out. He expected to be able to use the fresh rubber to challenge Sebastian Vettel, Charles Leclerc and others for position and potential points, but they were all allowed through and back to the lead lap in order to give Verstappen and Hamilton a chance to race out the final lap.
That made Ricciardo’s pit stop a waste. He was trapped a lap down and couldn’t even afford to try to chase anyone down, instead sitting with a front-row seat for the championship fight ahead with potential to see blue flags for Carlos Sainz behind him.
Sainz was also trapped in a tricky spot, forced to try to hold off the hard-charging Yuki Tsunoda through the final-lap dash while working around lapped traffic that received immediate blue flags. The Ferrari man was able to fend off Tsunoda, keep his spot on the podium and take fifth in the championship. But he did so by just .519s.
These are the parties that were truly impacted in Sunday’s decider. In making a mess of their position, Masi also threw a cloud of confusion and uncertainty over the battle with Verstappen and Hamilton up front, resulting in anger and frustration over how the race concluded.
In retrospect, one of three things likely should have happened in the final laps:
- A red flag should have been thrown quickly, allowing for a late standing start with everyone on fresh tires in a move similar to Baku earlier in the year. This likely would have been the most fair action.
- Lapped cars should have been allowed through with three laps to go, something Fernando Alonso pleaded for on team radio during the safety car period. This would have led to the same finish up front without the same level of controversy surrounding it.
- The safety car should have just ran through to the finish. This would have been a deflating ending to the year, but also a fair one for all involved.
That the final answer chosen was instead somewhere in the middle is the biggest concern heading into the offseason.
Make no mistake, this F1 season has still been a great one. That the championship was so tightly contested to potentially swing on a final call from race control shows just how great the title fight has been all year. It’s a blessing to have a season so good that it can end with last-second heartbreak.
This has been a campaign that those following won’t soon forget, up there with the best battles in the history of the sport. Two of the best drivers of their era — and perhaps any era, for that matter — pushed each other to the absolute limit up to the final lap of the season.
But the finish showed that there’s still room for improvement, both within the rulebook and perhaps the overall decision-making of race control.
Masi is just a human. He’s as capable of mistakes as you or I.
It’s just a shame one of those came at the grandest stage of the biggest season – a move this year may honestly have deserved, but not one that leaves a good lasting impression on many parties.
