The 2021 Formula 1 season did not lack any ingredient in terms of entertainment. Without a doubt, last year was the most even and entertaining of all the campaigns that the highest category has played since the start of the turbo-hybrid era in 2014.
The battle of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton for the drivers’ title could not have been more evenly matched at the last round of the season, in fact, both faced each other head-to-head and with the same number of points at an Abu Grand Prix Dhabi who put the icing on the cake with a heart-stopping finish that changed the lead on the last lap of the race.
With only five laps to go to see the checkered flag, Hamilton was leading the race with a wide advantage over his closest rival, however, the tranquility in Mercedes vanished at a stroke when Nicholas Latifi stamped his Williams against the protections of the track, causing the appearance of the safety car.
At that time, the star team made the decision to keep the Briton on the track with a very worn hard tire, while Red Bull called Verstappen to the pits to mount a new set of soft compounds that gave him a great advantage in in case the race direction decided to resume the session.
With only one lap to go and after some controversial decision that Mercedes did not like at all, the race resumed and Verstappen overtook Hamilton to become world champion, something that a few laps before was unimaginable given the difference between the two. .
This provoked the anger of the Hamilton and Mercedes fans, who came en masse to insult and, what is worse, threaten the Canadian Williams driver, since without his incident, the British driver would surely have won his eighth title in Formula 1.
At first, Latifi was concerned about the large number of messages he was receiving on his social networks, however, almost two months later, he seems to have downplayed it: “I already feel that everything has been left behind. It has not been an easy few days But that’s part of the sport.”
Recalling all the threats he received, the driver himself acknowledged that he himself thought that this would happen as soon as he realized what had caused his accident: “As I mentioned in my publication, I expected something similar after the race,” he told RacingNews365 .
To finish, Nicholas Latifi assured that as soon as the first controversy of the new F1 2022 season appears, his incident will be completely forgotten: “Of course, when the new campaign starts and something more important to talk about appears, all this story will be forgotten. For me, everything is in the past now, “concluded Williams .
