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Post by Stuntman on Dec 12, 2021 19:19:16 GMT
Well. I agree with Mercedes management in respect of today's race result being completely unfair. The second-best driver today was handed the race today by decisions made by the race director which were in direct contravention of the sport's own regulations.
Lewis Hamilton's reaction does him immense credit. There's absolutely no way that I would have been so gracious, mature and philosophical.
And the FIA? Well, it appears to me that they wanted to engineer a change to the status quo rather than follow their own rules and reward the better driver on the day.
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Post by Alex on Dec 12, 2021 20:01:07 GMT
I don't think they deliberately chose to let Max win. I think they panicked that the race was about to finish under the safety car and spotted an opportunity to have a one lap shootout to end the season on a bang. I think they took a split second decision and didn't quite spot how much of a one sided fight it would be. I think they thought Max and Lewis would battle it to the line and were left with egg on their face when Max overtook almost immediately and crossed the line almost 3 seconds ahead.
It really is an epic blunder and I suspect Michael Masi will get a right bollocking for the mess he made of it.
I don't blame Max, he did nothing wrong. Lewis couldn't pit because if he had Max would have stayed out and had the race ended under safety car he'd be looking like a right tit.
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Post by ChrisM on Dec 12, 2021 20:39:11 GMT
But races have finished under the safety car before.
It was an afore-gone conclusion, Max had much newer tyres and Lewis was on old tyres that his team had gambled would get to the end under racing within the rules.
Once the decision was made it was inevitable that Max would get past Lewis, just a question of how soon.
I can't see the decision being overturned even in a sporting Court because of the ramifications, but Massi should lose his job over it, he's made a mess of this season (Spa for example) and is one of the reasons I've lost interest in F1. Too much interfering, inconsistency and, IMHO, totally banale decisions. I appreciate that many top-level sports are not true sports any more due to the influence of money, politics etc, but even so, today does not reflect well on F1. Far better to see if Max could have got past the backmarkers in one lap, which would have made him an honorable champion instead of being gifted the title. Not sure if F1 was determined to find a new champion, or if it was racism against Hamilton or what, but what happened certainly was not fair nor morally right
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Dec 12, 2021 21:30:13 GMT
If they wanted to make it an exciting 1 lap shoot out they should have allowed all cars to pit and change tyres before reassembling behind the safety car.
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Post by Big Blue on Dec 13, 2021 9:37:43 GMT
I was totally pissed off. We were out for the day so I ignored all media. Got home. Watched the race. Got to that last lap farce and turned it off and deleted it from hard drive. Haven’t read a single article or Twitter about it.
Furious and I’m not a particular Hamilton fan: but he’s head and shoulders above all the other drivers as he proved outpacing Max on 20 laps older tyres.
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