Formula 1: The other question some fans are asking after Abu Dhabi

After Sunday’s 2021 Formula 1 season finale, another question that fans are asking is this: does anybody really care about the constructor championship?

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina Circuit solidified an eighth consecutive Formula 1 world constructor championship for Mercedes and a fifth in five years with the pairing of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas.

No other team in Formula 1 history had secured more than five in a row until Mercedes won their sixth in a row back in 2019, and they were able to extend that streak to include all eight years of the V6 turbo hybrid era, given the fact that the 2022 season is set to mark the beginning of a new era in Formula 1.

In this new era, they could very well continue to extend that streak.

But despite this historic achievement, there is one question that needs to be asked: does anybody really care? 

Based on the initial reaction to Sunday’s race, you never would have guessed that they had set such a historic mark.

Now, this may not be a fair question to ask, given the other major topic on Mercedes’ mind after how Sunday’s events unfolded: Lewis Hamilton losing out on the driver championship to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on the last lap after a controversial restart.

During each of the team’s first seven constructor championship-winning seasons, they embraced winning this title.

But during these seasons, they also won the driver championship, six times with Lewis Hamilton (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020) and once with Nico Rosberg (2016).

That wasn’t the case in 2021, marking the first time since the 2008 season that the driver champion’s team and the constructor champion were not one in the same.

But given just how huge the driver championship is, it just goes to show what really matters most.

The team’s Twitter and Instagram bios both still say, “Home of the 7x Formula 1 World Champions”, and there have been a whopping zero posts about them winning an eighth constructor title.

So — important?

We know that the constructor championship is more about the money than anything, as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner stated after the season’s penultimate race in Saudi Arabia the previous Sunday.

And when your top driver is in an intense battle for the far more prestigious world championship, how much do you really care about how many points your number two driver scores?

With that being said, team principal Toto Wolff and driver Valtteri Bottas were still celebrating the achievement in Abu Dhabi after the race.

So it is still quite a big deal, and selling it short of that is somewhat disrespectful to everybody who played a role in getting the team to where they finished by the end of the 22-race season.

In fact, from a monetary perspective and an individual employee bonus perspective, it’s still a huge deal to come out on top in this championship battle.

Overall, it’s simply not as big of a deal as the driver battle, but let’s not sell it short.