OT. Max Verstappen wins first F1 championship in a crazy miraculous finish

[UcanUwill]

Weird rules in F1, Lewis got the short end of that stick

The problem and why Mercedes are appealing it seems, is that race director didnt follow the rules. All back markers suppose to regain lost lap at the end of safety car, but they only allowed back markers between Lewis and Max to get out of the way, because they were running out of laps and wanted to finish the race and season racing and not behind safety car. They simply had no laps left to let all back markers go, so they made rules on a spot.

I've been watching F1 every weekend for about 4 years now and that ending didn't seem right

I'm not even a big Lewis homer or anything, but it was bizarre that they put Max in a supremely advantageous position like that. Lewis might as well have pitted if they were going to let him drive back up to the front and retake his position

It's all Latifi's fault at the end of the day

Yeap, Latifi with 7 total championship points decided the championship race finish. That is, second place will always have an advantage in a safety car, looking in hindsight, Lewis could have pitted and got new soft tires, but in that case Verstappen doesn't pit of course, and just imagine if Lewis doesn't overtake Max there, that would have been one the biggest tactical fails of all time. Lewis is often critical of Mercedes tactics, and even on 40 lap tires he was still competitive in those final turns, at the end, I think both teams did all that was needed, just Latifi was a miraculous hand of god there for Max.

Lewis won one miraculous championship this way, now he lost one. Of course this one is far more controversial, and it is sad that at the end of the day, top 3 people we will remember from this race are not just drivers, but a race director.

[Noodlesoop]

Casual fan observations:

1 - why does a safety car remove all advantages for the leading driver (12 second advantage for Hamilton down to zero)?
2 - how are the FIA allowed to change the rules on the spot?

It all felt very contrived and unfair. Really exciting spectacle but Hamilton was clearly the better driver today and was heading for a deserved the win before the crazy rules/FIA got involved.

[Slacktard]

Reading up on the finish it seems like it was a cluster**** of a rip-off. As someone who doesn't watch very much racing, I still know the when you get a crash or 'yellow flag' type situation the 'debate' from pit crews as to whether they have a car come into the pits for fresh tires or new fuel is always "we'll lose our position, can we get it back based on the car running faster with better tires and not having to conserve for fuel?"

Let's say someone is in 2nd and pits. They may see themselves come out of the pits and now have like 10, 15, 20 cars between them and the leader.

It seems like in this case they decided to suddenly allow the 'lapped cars' to go in front of the safety car (lapped cars being racers who are already down a lap and not actually in contention. This puts them 'out of the way'. It effectively let Verstappen to have a whole slew of cars that he would have HAD TO PASS suddenly removed between him and the leader.

[hisairness]

Lewis fans are real crybabies when decisions don't benefit their boy. Talking about things being unfair to Lewis and bitching about safety when Lewis unsafe driving could have killed Max at Silverstone. That crash and then Bottas taking Verstappen and Norris out in Hungary allowed Hamilton to even get back into championship contention. Last week Verstappen is told to give up the first place for gaining advantage by going out of track, today Hamilton does the same and it's not even investigated.

The only complaint I could agree with it is the made up on the spot decision to finish the race by letting them drive because they didn't want the championship to be decided by a safety car.

[Mauro Pedrosa]

Casual fan observations:

1 - why does a safety car remove all advantages for the leading driver (12 second advantage for Hamilton down to zero)?
2 - how are the FIA allowed to change the rules on the spot?

It all felt very contrived and unfair. Really exciting spectacle but Hamilton was clearly the better driver today and was heading for a deserved the win before the crazy rules/FIA got involved.

That’s why I just stick to Futbol, Basketball and MMA

[Claud]

They should have redflagged the last 3 laps.. that's the only way it would be fair.

Still, mercedes shot themselves on the foot by not pitting Lewis when they needed to.

Cool to see Max become a world champ after an insane season. Can't remember a more eventful season in a LONG time.

[Archx]

Lewis and his dad both congratulated Max and his family for winning the championship. Lewis is not the problem here, it's FiA and their inconsistant rullings through the whole year.

For this race and specially last lap, it was a complete disaster and they breached their own rules regarding safety car. Problem specifically was letting only cars between Lewis and Max pass, while they didn't let cars behind Max unlap themselves because it would take too much time.

It's like saying in basketball terms, one team is leading 100-89 with 1 minute left but whoever scores next wins. Makes no sense.

[_qubik]

Somewhat keeping an eye on F1 so I'll be up to date when the next great finnish driver arrives.

Was rooting for Hamilton. Verstappen doesn't care about safety of others or the rules. If he was a back of the grid driver with those antics they wouldn't even allow him there.

I undertand this opinion, and I get most texbook fans like Hamilton more, but that what makes Max so great, he is taking on every chance no matter how risky, kid is a different animal, and to me, as casual fan its nice seeing someone with noticeably very different driving style, in a sport, were most of top 20 guys are so good they all become a wash cause everyone drives with the same centimeter to centimeter precision. This was the case for years, where driver does all the work, but at the end they are all so good that they become irrelevant and at the end its just the car that matters. This wasnt the case with Max and Lewis, sure RedBulll and especiall;y mercedes were best cars, but still they are so much better than their teammates, who drive the same car, we really see two all timers here. And I do wonder how much of it is the fact Mercedes is optimized just for Lewis where RedBull is optimized just for Max, but man the difference shouldn't be that big. When you look how Lewis overtakes everyone easier than cracking a pistacios with his Mercedes, while Bottas cant do anything of the sort, and for Max, he just takes on every posssible gap to take an advantage, being very risky, a mad man at times, but you cant deny his brilliance, he would not be relevant with most cars probably, he is World champion and not back of the grind not just because hes on great car.

There are rules, and there are people to enforce it. Max takes it to the limit, he tries things that can have a bad outcome. I see no problem, I get a lot of joy from it, he tries hard, and it paid off. Hypocrisy to care a lot about safety when you racing this **** that goes 350km/h even considering a **** ton of downforce.

It was great, great, Hamilton was for almost a decade the textbook definitiom of greatness and continuity, he prefered getting as much points as posible instead of try harding for the P1. Different approaches, this year, Maxs paid off

[queridiculo]

Lewis fans are real crybabies when decisions don't benefit their boy. Talking about things being unfair to Lewis and bitching about safety when Lewis unsafe driving could have killed Max at Silverstone. That crash and then Bottas taking Verstappen and Norris out in Hungary allowed Hamilton to even get back into championship contention. Last week Verstappen is told to give up the first place for gaining advantage by going out of track, today Hamilton does the same and it's not even investigated.

The only complaint I could agree with it is the made up on the spot decision to finish the race by letting them drive because they didn't want the championship to be decided by a safety car.

I've been a Senna and Michael Schumacher fan since way back, and have lost interest in the sport for some time.

Hamilton vs. Verstappen got me back into it and I've got zero skin in the game and would have preferred Verstappen to win it to keep Hamilton and Schumacher tied.

This isn't about fanboyism, it's about turning the outcome of a race on its head with an absolutely inexplicable ruling made up on the fly that is not supported by the sporting regulations.

The rules are clear, either SC is pitted and the race is continued with the lapped cars keeping their current positions, or the cars unlap themselves and SC comes in on the following lap.

This is like a 5 point game in the final seconds of game 7 of the NBA finals interrupted by a streaker and the ref deciding for a jump ball following the interruption and declaring that the next basket wins the game.

It's absurd.

[queridiculo]

They should have redflagged the last 3 laps.. that's the only way it would be fair.

Still, mercedes shot themselves on the foot by not pitting Lewis when they needed to.

Cool to see Max become a world champ after an insane season. Can't remember a more eventful season in a LONG time.

Verstappen would have just stayed on the track and taken P1.

[My Main Man]

Lol my wife haaaaates Verstappen so much and has just been in a pissy mood all day. She made me take the kids out so she could have a quiet morning of F1 racing and when I got back she went off on how dumb it was that Mercedes didn’t do any tire changes down the stretch.

[bisme37]

There are more new off-topic threads on the GB today than on-topic treads lol. I'm going to move this to the "Other Sports" board, but leave the "shadow topic" in place so it can still be seen on the GB. I'm thinking lots of people don't know that board exists so here's a chance to check it out. There's already an F1 racing thread over there.

[Merc_Porto]

That was something else, just brilliant!

[bigbreakfast]

Terrible, manufactured ending to what was a great (although controversy filled) year. Both drivers deserve the WDC but Hamilton was robbed today.

Off topic, but Hamilton shows he's worthy of 7 WDCs the classy way he handled the shocking loss (his father too). I didn't care for Hamilton nor Verstappen before this season but Hamilton's has solidified his status as GOAT (his pace, his racecraft, his character, the way he has transcended the sport) in my opinion.

[Optimus_Steel]

Huge Nascar, Indycar, F1 fan here, my 2 cents: Either driver is deserving champions, both the best and there is large gap to 3rd best..... however the officials once again throughly undermined the integrity of the sport in the long term. If their intention was to get back to green flag racing they should have red flagged the race and have a final standing start. It was clear that Williams car was in a bad spot and would take a while to clean up. Then how do you allow just some lap cars thru but not all??? 3rd place should have started behind the 2nd place car instead was multiple cars behind. Absolutely pathetic handling of a crucial moment. Then you go back to awarding half points at Spa and calling it an official race for two laps of safety car laps where passing was not allowed, freaking Mazepin getting a fastest lap.... the race the past week was also a debacle, racing a ridiculously dangerous track with very high speed, numerous blind corners between walls, which predictably caused more yellows and there again the officials made more dumbfounded moves; F1 was lucky no one was seriously injured that race. The officials decisions made this season have undermined the integrity of the sport, you lose that then what do you have?

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