In a sporting era loaded with blown big leads in important events, a collapse by Lewis Hamilton in this year’s Formula One drivers standings would be the worst.
Blowing a 3-1 lead in an NBA playoff series is extremely rare. So when the Houston Rockets overcame a 3-1 deficit to beat the Los Angeles Clippers in the Western Conference Semifinals in 2015, it was a big deal.
Until it happened again in the 2016 season, but this time with the record 73-win Golden State Warriors overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the Western Conference Finals to the Oklahoma City Thunder, which allowed the Warriors to advance to the NBA Finals for the second straight season looking to become the NBA champion with the highest win total in league history.
Up 3-1 over the Cleveland Cavaliers, the series looked to be over heading back to Golden State for Game 5. But the Warriors blew the 3-1 lead and fell 4-3 to the Cavaliers after the Cavaliers became the first team to rally back from a 3-1 deficit in the history of the NBA Finals.
But it was Cleveland blowing the 3-1 lead in the World Series last fall when the Chicago Cubs rallied to beat the Indians, becoming just the sixth team in World Series history to overcome the deficit.
More from Formula One
- Formula 1: Top Red Bull threat identified for 2024
- Formula 1: Why the Max Verstappen retirement obsession?
- Formula 1: Williams ‘mistake’ hints Logan Sargeant’s future
- Formula 1 awaiting key confirmation for 2024 season
- Formula 1: The ‘championship’ Max Verstappen only leads by 3 points
And who can forget when Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons were on their way to winning the first Super Bowl in franchise history up 28-3 over Tom Brady and the New England Patriots before the Patriots stormed back to win the first overtime game in Super Bowl history by a score of 34-28? The Patriots more than doubled the all-time largest deficit overcome in Super Bowl history, which was 10 points, to win Super Bowl LI.
This has truly been a sporting era of the blown lead. Now how does this relate to Formula One? Because with four races to go, three-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, who drives for Mercedes, has a 59-point lead over four-time Formula One champion Sebastian Vettel, who drives for Ferrari, with Valtteri Bottas, who also drives for Mercedes, just 13 points behind Vettel and still in the championship hunt as well.
With 25 points on the table for the winners of each of the remaining four races of the season, that means a maximum of 100 points are available for each driver throughout the rest of the season. With Vettel trailing Hamilton by 59 points and Bottas trailing him by 72 points, this should make it pretty much impossible for Hamilton not to win this year’s championship, right?
Not quite, but it would make it extremely challenging. However, it can be done. There are four races to go in the 2017 season, and over the course of the last four races, Hamilton has actually gone from trailing Vettel by seven points in the standings to leading him by 59 points, and that’s despite the fact that Vettel has both a 3rd and a 4th place finish over the course of the last four races.
Hamilton has also gone from leading Bottas by just 27 points in the standings to leading him by 72 points, and that’s despite the fact that Bottas has finished everywhere in the top 5 except for 1st place over the past four races and hasn’t finished outside of it.
So there was a 66-point swing in favor of Hamilton in a four-race span over Vettel and a 45-point swing in favor of Hamilton over Bottas in the same span. While it would be challenging for Vettel to rally from 59 points back or Bottas to rally from 72 points back with just 100 points maximum on the table in the final four races of the season, Hamilton has proven that it is possible given the fact that he experienced swings of 66 points over Vettel and 45 points over Bottas over the last four races even with Vettel and Bottas both still having some success during that time.
Next: Looking back at Lewis Hamilton's record-setting accomplishment
There are two possible scenarios by which Lewis Hamilton can actually seal his fourth career Formula One championship this weekend in the United States Grand Prix, the 17th race of the 20-race 2017 season, at Circuit of the Americas in Austin Texas, which will be broadcast live on NBC starting at 3:00 PM ET on Sunday, October 22nd.
However, the fact remains that Hamilton could also lose his 59-point lead in the drivers standings over the next four races, and if he were to do so, it would be without a doubt the biggest collapse in what has become the era of blown leads in sports.