WHAT. AN. ENDING. Max Verstappen Wins the 2021 F1 World Championship in Last Lap Controversy. THIS LEAGUE
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Max Verstappen is your 2021 F1 Driver's World Champion. What an absolutely incredible season we just witnessed and today's race was the most fitting ending to it. This race looked like it was over, done, finished. Lewis Hamilton was cruising to an easy victory over ten seconds ahead of Verstappen with less than ten laps to go. That was until a last-minute crash brought out the safety car.
From there it looked like the race might end under caution because there were only four laps left and they had to clean up the accident. This would have given Lewis Hamilton his record-breaking eighth world championship. Even if the race did restart, there were several lapped cars in between Hamilton and Verstappen, so the world championship was firmly in Hamilton's grasp. The rule is to let the lapped cars pass everyone so that they are out of the way on the restart, but at one point it looked like they weren't going to let them pass so that they could restart the race instead of ending under a caution flag.
Red Bull and Verstappen needed a miracle and they got that miracle with the safety car, which eliminated Hamilton's lead and then they got another miracle from the FIA. The race director made the controversial call to let only the lapped cars in between Hamilton and Verstappen pass and to bring the safety car in with only one lap left to go. All of this happened in two minutes of chaos. Hamilton and Verstappen ended up side by side on the last lap to decide the world championship. After 22 races, it all came down to one lap to decide it all.
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Verstappen made the pass and was able to hold off Hamilton to win his first world championship all while Mercedes was on the radio yelling at the race director about how they screwed Hamilton out of a world championship. This. League.
The end of this race is going to be debated for decades. Mercedes are currently launching protests that the decision was against the regulations and that the race result was unfair, but they haven't reached a decision yet.
Just like with any sport, the officials have an impossible job of trying to maintain the rules and regulations in the midst of chaos with millions of people scrutinizing every decision they make. I'm not going to try and defend the stewards and their decision-making, because they haven't had a great year, but personally, I would much rather see the two drivers go wheel to wheel to end the season. This is a very biased view of the situation and it favors the decision the stewards made, I'm not going to try and hide it. At the end of the day, give me the ending we got today where they're restarting the race on the last lap side by side with everything on the line. I don't want the World Championship to be decided under caution or lapped cars getting in the way, even if that is the more "fair" ending. The safety car was going to eliminate the lead that Hamilton had built up before the crash, so that was irrelevant, the debate is about how they restarted the race.
I can see if you're a Hamilton fan you probably feel exactly the opposite way and that the stewards completely screwed him out of a World Championship. Everyone has their take on the situation and the end of this race is going to be debated throughout the history of the sport. I loved having them end this season letting them battle it out on track, but I don't think there's anything that could stop Hamilton fans from being furious right now.
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This was one of the greatest seasons in the history of Formula One. Max Verstappen is the 2021 Driver's World Champion. He's 24 years old and world champion of the world for the first time. He has an incredibly bright future ahead of him, this is just the beginning for Verstappen. It was a very cool moment to see him celebrating with his Dad, who is a former F1 driver.
Whether you like Hamilton or not, he showed pure class at the end of the race despite that controversial ending. He could have easily been a bad sport about the end of that race and everyone would have understood, but he immediately went to congratulate Verstappen and let him have his moment.
Mercedes will be punching air for months over that race but the team did end up with a nice little consolation prize of the Constructors Championship. That makes it eight years in a row winning the team championship. Talk about a dynasty.
The real winner at the end of the day? The "Drive to Survive" producers. This season is going to be a movie and people won't believe all of this actually happened in one season. Now we just have to wait for them to finish editing it, which will likely be in late February or early March right before the start of the 2022 season.
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There were so many other storylines from today's race outside of the battle between Hamilton and Verstappen, but two really stood out above the rest.
First, what a battle by Sergio Perez to hold up Hamilton in the middle of the race. He did a fantastic job holding back Hamilton and definitely earned his pinstripes with Red Bull after that performance. He played a major role this year in Verstappen winning the world championship and was a great teammate. He deserves that seat next year and can't wait to see him continue to grow in the role of the second seat at Red Bull.
The second storyline was Kimi Raikkonen's final race in F1. The 2007 World Champion had an unfortunate end to the race when his car broke down on the twenty-ninth lap, but it was a great tribute that he was still voted Driver of the Day by the fans. He's given us so many hilarious and incredible moments on and off the track. The grid won't be the same without Kimi on it next year.
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That's a wrap for this season. What a year, thank you everyone for following along this season. It doesn't get any better than this as an F1 fan and I can't wait for the 2022 season. Don't worry we will get through this long winter off-season together.
And finally LIGHTS OUT AND AWAY WE GO to the 2022 Season.