Formula 1: 5 mistakes that cost Lewis Hamilton the championship

Mistake number 4: Mercedes not giving up track position under VSC

Antonio Giovinazzi’s failing Alfa Romeo was the catalyst for Mercedes’ second blunder, bringing out a virtual safety car on lap 36. At that point, Hamilton was about six seconds ahead of Verstappen and both were still on their hard tires.

To stop under the VSC would have cost Hamilton about 14 seconds and the lead, but it would have forced Red Bull into another tough call of their own. Hamilton seemed to favor a pit stop, but he was told to stay out while Verstappen pitted behind him for fresh hard tires.

Had Mercedes brought Hamilton in initially, Red Bull would have been forced to leave Verstappen out to take the lead. The final laps then would have been run opposite to what they were, with Verstappen on fading tires trying to hold off a charging Hamilton.

Mercedes still had an opportunity to pit at the end of the next lap, and their fans across the globe must have been shouting and throwing things at their broadcast devices of choice when they opted not to.

Hamilton had been almost half a second per lap faster than Verstappen all race and would have had around 20 laps to make up about eight seconds on far fresher tires. How a team that had won seven straight championships, six with this very driver, lacked the confidence to give him a chance to win on the race track is truly baffling. But Mercedes clearly hadn’t done a lot of introspection.

We all saw the lap times, but only Mercedes chose to set them aside for track position, which is like Bitcoin in that it is, at once, immensely valuable and totally worthless.

Verstappen took a sharp bite out of Hamilton’s lead after his second stop, but his gains had slowed by around lap 45 or so. Despite the clear errors by his team, it looked like Hamilton was going to disappear into the lights of Yas Marina and claim his eighth championship.

But the ghost of the great Michael Schumacher’s career — and the living bodies of his son Mick and Nicholas Latifi — had other plans for this Sunday, and the two backmarkers touched, sending Latifi off course to dirty up his tires.

His subsequent spin and contact with the wall brought out the fateful safety car that will be haunting Hamilton’s dreams and fueling media and fan debate until we are all but wisps in the wind.