Formula 1: 3 ridiculous lies to shoot down before 2022

Formula 1 lies: No. 2 – Max Verstappen is an illegitimate champion

Contrary to what you’ll spend 24/7 reading on Twitter if you allow yourself to do so, it is absolutely feasible for both numbers one and two to be false.

The unfortunate part is that it is blatantly obvious how those opinions would be completely flipped for both sides if it had unfolded in the opposite direction.

Just thinking about how that would look is scary…

But no matter how you look at it, a season-long points championship has far more twists and turns than what happens on the final lap of the final race.

Yes, the call was controversial, but the idea that Michael Masi won Max Verstappen the championship after eight and a half months is laughable. If anybody actually believed it, there wouldn’t be a need to argue it. Think about it.

In a championship so evenly matched, Verstappen had the upper hand more often than not. He led more than twice as many laps as Hamilton did, set a record for podium finishes in a season, and did not finish lower than second place when his race wasn’t hindered by contact (with a Mercedes each time, ironically) or a literally random tire failure.

Here’s a scenario to consider. What if Abu Dhabi happens in July, and the race ends under the safety car with Hamilton winning? And then Silverstone ends the season in December instead, and Hamilton drives into the side of Verstappen like he did earlier in the year?

What narrative are we focusing on instead? Hamilton’s penalty and his incredible drive back to the front to win not only the race but the title with a late pass on Charles Leclerc. We are talking about a heroic eight-time championship-winning effort in the final laps, with very little, if any, thought to how it ended up like that — kind of like Mercedes and their shameless celebrations when Verstappen was being treated in hospital.

Would Hamilton have been an “illegitimate champion”? Keep in mind, the FIA threatened to intervene if contact decided the title in Abu Dhabi (translation: if Verstappen intentionally wrecked Hamilton to win, which was never going to happen, but it gave the media something to talk about leading up to the race).

Would this have been any different?