Monthly Archives: December 2021

2021 F1 World Championship thoughts


It was Marco (https://twitter.com/Irosmarco) who prompted me on Twitter.

Question to you Jan
Formula 1 fan to another Formula 1 fan.
Not Hamilton or Verstappen. But as a Formula 1 fan.

Do you think last race was a fair race?
Do you think Verstappen deserved to win the last race?
Did Masi make a correct decision?

Don’t be biased but be fair.

(https://twitter.com/Irosmarco/status/1475565657441906690)

And that question intrigued me to such an extent that I though; “This warrants a real answer and not just something that is limited by Twitter’s character count”. So, Marco, here goes nothing…

There are so many angles to this question that I will limit myself to a couple of them.

Loose / loose

Ultimately, for Masi, it was a loose / loose decision.
What I mean by that is he has now lost out for everyone who roots for Hamilton, obviously, or I would not even be writing this.
If he had done nothing, and the race had finished behind the safety car, he would also loose. There would be not a living Max Verstappen fan who would not have hated his guts. Christian Horner cried out; “we only need one lap to race.” Everybody would have said that the race was “given” to Lewis, as that would be the case in that situation, as Max would have had no chance to overtake him.

That leaves the bit that the cars that were behind Max were not allowed to overtake them both. Well, basically this would effectively also lead to a race that ends behind the safety car, as there was only a good lap left in the race.

Circumstances

Rubber

If we step back just a little bit, we have the issue of strategies. If we would put ourselves in the situation that both teams had somehow wounded up with the strategy that put both Lewis as well as Max on fresh red rubber… Would Max then even have had the opportunity to overtake? Seeing how the rest of the race was, probably not, but finally, they were not both on fresh red rubber. Is this something that should have influenced the decision? If we apply this rubber-fact either way? It should not have and I am no mindreader.

The crash

In that same light, if Latifi would not have crashed, none of this would have happened. No safety car, no issues with cars being left in the queue and so on, and so on.

Everything together

If you look at this race, if you look at the outcome…
If you put this in perspective over the racing season…
If you look at “the purpose of Formula one racing”

Completely unbiassed, looking at Formula one, the best possible decisions were made.
Why?
Because they have brought about emotion and passion in so many people. For years and years F1 has been dominated by either a single driver or a single team. Up to a point where folks just gave up, as you could already predict the world champion after the first lap of the first race.
Additionally, car racing is not something you do with knife and fork. Dangerous? Hell, yes, it is dangerous. And here you can go off in a complete tantrum of it’s own around halo’s and what have you.

If I look at the whole picture, Michael Masi could not have done a better job. Even more people than ever before will be so excited to see the 2022 F1 World Championship battle taking place, and, as far as I am concerned (which essentially is about “zero”) is what this is all about.

Marco, I hope this is an answer to your call. I do not really expect you to agree with me, but that is okay. As Morgan Freeman said: “We might not agree, but that doesn’t mean we cannot be friends.” Well, okay, he did not say that, but it is my free interpretation of it…