The 2020-21 race season is over with Max Verstappen, at the time of writing, the Driver’s Champion having won the last race in Abu Dhabi on the 12th December. The Mercedes team said they would contest this result; however, it is unlikely to be a successful challenge.
Why are Mercedes contesting the result of the Abu Dhabi race?
In essence the contentiousness is due to the element of luck which allowed Max Verstappen to erase an approximate 12 second gap behind race leader Lewis Hamilton and fit new tyres ending up with no gap to close and a distinct tyre advantage before a 1 lap “shoot-out” after the safety car period ended.
Hamilton had led the race from the start. Up to lap 51 when the safety car was deployed, Verstappen could not catch Hamilton and it was only through luck (Latifi’s crash, which required a safety car) that Verstappen could fit new tyres and close up with Hamilton. This, under the current regulations, is called racing. It’s actually entertainment, not racing.
So Hamilton “won” 57 laps or 98% of the race and Verstappen “won” 1 lap, in the process securing the Driver’s Championship.
Under the current regulations this is acceptable, when clearly it’s not.
The race should be treated equally from start to finish. If you have built up a lead over the race, this lead should not be negated by anything.
The Solution
The current regulations will have to be changed to prevent luck deciding race results, let alone Driver’s or Constructor’s Championships.
A couple of possibilities for change:
Ban pit entry under virtual and actual safety car periods. This will ensure the playing field remains level for all cars. It is too much of a lottery where a car is on the track when the safety car is deployed. It can benefit one car tremendously because they can get into the pits quickly, whereas another car has 90% of a lap to complete, at low speed, until they can pit. This isn’t fair.
The actual on-track race order (not the unwound, lapped drivers going past the saftey car) plus gap times between cars must be recorded at the point the virtual or actual safety car is deployed. The gaps must be owned by each car after the virtual or actual safety car is withdrawn so that no time advantage can be gained. The gaps can be “depreciated” over a fixed number of laps say 5 or 10 depending on each circuit’s average lap time at the point in the race when the safety car is deployed. Unlapping cars should not occur because this gives an unfair advantage to cars behind.
These changes would prevent safety car events from creating unfair advantages to cars who, in the case of the Abu Dhabi race, were clearly not sufficiently competitive during actual racing.
Unfortunately the regulations appear to have allowed Verstappen to get an advantage through closing the gap and fitting new tyres, which really isn’t acceptable. Without these advantages Verstappen would almost certainly not have won.
As Christian Horner, Team Principal of Red Bull said during and after the race: “
Lap 49/58: "He's going to need a miracle,"
"Max got a little bit lucky with the safety car tonight but still had to come through with the strategy.”
Max Verstappen:
"Finally a bit of luck for me. I also want to say thank you to Checo, he's been a brilliant team-mate.”
Here’s what might have been a better quote from Red Bull:
“We commiserate with Mercedes who had the faster car for the vast majority of this race and we understand, under the current regulations, that Max gained a significant advantage as a result of the safety car. We need to look at the Regulations to ensure fair racing occurs throughout the entire race.”
If the Red Bull & Mercedes cars had been in opposite situations to the actual race, you can be sure Red Bull would be contesting the result, 100%.
I suspect Mercedes’ legal challenge will fail unless, for example, evidence can be found that Red Bull had colluded with other drivers to engineer a safety car. As Horner said at lap 49 “we need a miracle” which Latifi appeared to deliver on lap 51. Apparently Horner said that Latifi deserves a life-time supply of Red Bull.
Hamilton was the winner of post race behaviour, congratulating Verstappen and not throwing his teddy out of the cot or flouncing off.
It’s time to update the regulations so that (proper) racing decides results not random incidents, or luck.
A not very objective review of the race…
Interesting.
Verstappen deserves the win and Driver’s Championship, let’s ignore the element of luck; Hamilton already has 7 titles so he doesn’t need/deserve the win.
From a Chief Sports Writer….
20th January 2022
Here’s an interesting suggestion taken from NASCAR. I don’t believe it would provide the fairness which is required, but it does show NASCAR have thought about this issue more than F1.
https://total-motorsport.com/nascar-rule-formula-1-should-use/