Formula 1: No controversy, same result? ‘Ironically’

Had race procedures been completely followed to conclude the 2021 Formula 1 season in Abu Dhabi, would the outcome have been the same?

The final lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to conclude the 2021 Formula 1 season — and to crown the 2021 world champion — will be remembered for a plethora of reasons, and a number of those reasons have to do with the controversy that led to that last-lap shootout.

When Williams’ Nicholas Latifi crashed with under six laps remaining and the safety car was deployed, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen came into the pits for new soft tires.

Running in second place and roughly 11 seconds behind race leader Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes at the time, Verstappen had nothing to lose.

But Hamilton’s team opted to keep him out on old hard tires so that he would not relinquish track position, which would naturally be huge if the race didn’t end up restarting.

However, it did restart with one lap remaining, and it was Hamilton leading Verstappen at the line after the five cars in between the two were allowed to unlap themselves.

Verstappen passed Hamilton in turn five of the 16-turn, 3.281-mile (5.280-kilometer) Yas Marina Circuit on lap 58 of 58, and he held off two challenges from Hamilton throughout the remainder of the lap to claim his first world championship, denying Hamilton what would have been a record-breaking eighth.

Because of how the restart unfolded, and the fact that, to ensure the race didn’t end under the safety car, only those five drivers were allowed to unlap themselves before the safety car came back in later that lap, many have argued that the result have been overturned.

Hamilton and Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff even boycotted the FIA prize giving gala in Paris, France, a gala which Hamilton was required to attend because he finished in the top three in the driver standings.

Hamilton has still not spoken to the public since the end of the race.

However, had all of the normal procedures been followed — not just the one that everyone is taking about — amid the safety car period, would the result still have been the same?

In his recent article titled “Karun Chandhok’s top 10 Formula 1 drivers of the 2021 season: Who makes the cut after epic year?”, Sky Sports Formula 1 Expert Karun Chandhok included one pertinent sentence about the whole situation when discussing Hamilton and his #2 ranking.

"“Amidst all the noise of the past week, it’s worth remembering that, ironically, if Michael Masi had followed all the normal procedures and asked all the lapped cars to go past before the end of lap 56, Max would have passed Lewis on the last lap anyway.”"

Many have spent the last week and a half arguing that had race director Michael Masi gotten it right, Hamilton would have won. However, had he really gotten it right, from start to finish, the same outcome would have been observed.

A few key details, when you dig deeper, into Chandhok’s statement go to show just how accurate it is — and just how non-controversial this race finish was, when you take out all the emotion and posturing that followed.

Aside from Hamilton, there were two multi-time world champions competing in the race: four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel of Aston Martin and two-time world champion Fernando Alonso of Alpine.

Both questioned on their team radios why they weren’t allowed to unlap themselves much sooner. Alonso even laughed at the fact that Verstappen was still two cars behind him, noting that he should have been two cars in front of him — as would be the case under a completely normal safety car procedure.

Let’s also not forget what race engineer Peter Bonnington told Hamilton on the radio. Knowing what a normal procedure entails, he first told Hamilton that the lapped cars would indeed be cleared out of the way, but that the race may not restart in time.

There was always a chance that the race would not restart. But there was always a risk, for Hamilton, that it would.

Once again, under a completely normal safety car procedure, Hamilton was always going to be a sitting duck in this scenario.

Masi’s priority was to clear the crashed Williams from the track, and at first, the decision was made to leave the lapped cars in place so that the race could end under green flag conditions.

The fact that this decision was flipped on the penultimate lap is what left many fuming, but had the proper procedure been executed from start to finish, this would not have even been an issue.

One thing that is worth noting is the fact that Mercedes came to Yas Marina Circuit prepared with a barrister, a bold move for a team that supposedly wanted to win the world championship on the race track.

They had anticipated some sort of controversy. They had anticipated an off-track fight to go along with the perfectly legal on-track fight.

In one respect, you can’t blame them.

This race unfolded following a week during which many media shamelessly predicted that Verstappen would intentionally wreck Hamilton to seal the championship, given the fact that he owned the tiebreaker (nine wins to eight), as the pair were tied at 369.5 points.

Apparently, they bought into it.

At the end of the day, both of the Silver Arrows’ protests were dismissed, and despite lodging an intent to appeal, they did not do so. Verstappen is officially the 2021 Formula 1 world champion.