The 2021 F1 season is easily one of the best seasons in the F1 sport's history. The championship battle between Sir Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen was so fierce that it lasted even after the end of the 2021 season. This is the story of how Max Verstappen won the 2021 championship in the eventful final race of the season at Abu Dhabi through questionable circumstances.
Preface
It was the year 2021 after a purely dominating show in 2020. Lewis Hamilton and the Mercedes F1 team was clear favourite for both titles. But slight changes in the regulation for the year 2021 gave an advantage to the cars with high rake concept hindering the performance of low rake cars. Mercedes being the low-rake car was heavily impacted and was at disadvantage. While RedBull was a high-rake car it had an advantage and got the performance boost.
Due to this, RedBull and Mercedes were very closely matched in performance levels in 2021. which resulted in exciting battles between Hamilton and Verstappen throughout the year.
Heading into the final race of the season in The 2021 AbuDhabi Grand Prix both championship rivals were equal on points. The points were 369.5 So it was all about who finished in front of either of them. If both finish out of points, Max would win the championship regardless of his position since he had 1 win more than Lewis.
Qualifying
Qualifying wasn't that interesting of a session. Max Verstappen put it on the pole and Lewis was P2. Lewis also had an advantage on him since P2 has direct access to the inside line. Max's new teammate that season, Sergio Perez was P4 and Hamilton's teammate, Valtteri Bottas was P6.
The Race Start
As discussed earlier. Hamilton got a better start than Max and took advantage of the inside line and took the lead of the race in the first corner itself.
And since that point, Max could not catch up to Hamilton since he lacked race pace relative to Lewis.
Teammate to the rescue!
It was lap 14 Hamilton had pulled up a decent amount of lead on Verstappen in P2 and Max's teammate Sergio Perez was in P3 behind him. Max pits for a new set of Hard tyres and he's on 1 stop strategy.
Max joins the race after pitting in P3 behind Sergio Perez then on the next lap Lewis pits for the hards and he's on 1 stop strategy too.
So the order now is Sergio Perez on lead Lewis Hamilton behind very close to him and Max behind Lewis with a gap of 8-9 seconds.
Even at this point, Hamilton is in a better position, but Sergio Perez had other ideas.
When Hamilton caught up to Sergio Perez, Sergio Perez strategically held back Lewis and was decreasing his pace which helped max who was behind Lewis catch up to him. Perez who still was on old tyres held back Hamilton and hindered his lap times for a few laps. Usually, F1 drivers are ruthless and Sergio wasn't bound to do it for Max. But still, he compromised his own race just for the sake of Max and his team. Because of this team play, Sergio even got famous for being the nicest teammate and team player ever.
Hamilton eventually passed Checo but He had already done enough for Max to catch up to Hamilton. Nonetheless, Max was exactly behind Sergio. Sergio let Max pass him and gave him DRS to catch Hamilton. Max closed the gap to Hamilton within a second.
At the end of the season when Max won the championship he always gave credit to Checo for what he did for him. He said he's a World Champion because of Checo.
That's not the end! The real show starts just now!
The Controversy
Even after Checo's efforts and even after Max closed the gap to Hamilton, Max's pace was still less than Hamilton and He started to get away from Max.
It looked like it was all over for Max and Lewis is going to get the win and win the championship as well.
While the last 5-6 laps were remaining, Williams F1 team driver, Nicholas Latifi crashed in sector 3 of the Abudhabi circuit. The safety car was deployed and Max took advantage of the safety car by pitting yet sustaining his P2 position. The only problem was, there were like 5 lapped cars in between Hamilton and Verstappen. So even though Max was P2 behind Hamilton he was way behind him in the actual distance.
These few laps behind the safety car were the tensest laps for FIA, and Both the teams. Race engineers, Team principals from both teams were having conversations with FIA race director Michael Masi.
Everybody thought that Race will end behind the safety car, but Michael Masi came up with a series of controversial decisions.
Firstly Michael let all the lapped cars between Hamilton and Verstappen unlap themselves and join the pack from behind. This cleared the distance between Hamilton and Verstappen and Max was right on the tail of Lewis. But still, everybody felt that Race will finish behind the safety car. But Michael Masi again came up with a decision that the safety car will end on the second last lap of the race. That means there will be 1 Racing lap for both the pairs to fight but the fight wouldn't be equal since Lewis was on 45-48 laps of older hards and Max was on Fresh new soft compound tyres. Any experienced F1 fan knows how big of a difference tyre compounds and tyre age make and Hamilton was lacking both tyre age and tyre compound.
So what had to happen? Max overtook Hamilton in the middle of the last lap and went on to finish 1st and Lewis finished 2nd even after leading the race for most of the laps.
Toto Wolff, team boss of Mercedes started yelling on the radio "No Michael! No! That was so not right!"
The RedBull garage was delighted since they won the driver championship after 7 long years!
Post-race events
The matter of the championship and controversy went on to the court where the court ultimately declared max the champion. Michael Masi was fired from FIA for making these controversial decisions.
Even after all the incidents, Lewis braced himself like a real champion! He Congratulated Max and that's what I call the peek of sportsmanship! What a Legend Sir Lewis Hamilton!!!
So this was the amazing story of the 2021 title decider race. Many believe this to be similar to the historic events of Fernando Alonso (23 years old driver) ending the dominance of Michael Schumacher (7 times F1 world champion) in 2005.
Hope you liked the story!
See ya.
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