Lewis Hamilton has thought back on the scandalous circumstances surrounding how he let an unprecedented 8th World Title elude him at the 2021 season’s grand finale in Abu Dhabi.
This happened when a decision was taken by the then F1 race director, Michael Masi, to arrange a final clash between Hamilton and Max Verstappen after a safety car period following a late crash for Nicholas Latifi in 2021’s heated title race between the two drivers.
Masi only authorised a small number of lapped cars to un-lap themselves once more, which allowed Verstappen to surpass Hamilton and win the World Championship for the first time on substantially fresher tyres. However, Hamilton had been dominating the race before the incident involving Latifi occurred.
- ‘Hard to beat’ Schumacher of late, says Kevin Magnussen.
- Toto Wolff Urges Lewis Hamilton Supporters To “Move On” While Disclosing A Shocking Viewpoint.
Masi’s choices ultimately resulted in him losing his job, and it prevented Hamilton from overtaking Michael Schumacher to occupy the sole top spot of the World Championship hierarchy with eight title wins.
As the first anniversary draws closer, Hamilton was questioned in Austin about whether he believed Masi’s actions were intentional or not. He said: “I don’t know. It feels so long ago now,”
“I think it was just bad decision-making. I’m sure there is ego involved and then there are also the moving parts. There’s people speaking into his ear. I don’t feel like it was particularly targeted.”
The fact that the sport as a whole permitted that incredibly contentious incident to occur and permitted a scenario in which the malfeasance of the powers-that-be to affect the outcome of a World Championship seems to have upset Hamilton more than anything else.
He added: “What really was breaking was to just believe that the sport would do something like that, that that would happen in the sport, given that there are so many people who you rely on,”
“You expect that the job would be done right. And an outcome of a world championship, which so many people have worked so hard for, would come out through a wrong decision from somebody, you know?
“That was probably the only thing. It wasn’t for my lack of love for working with my team or racing cars, it was literally that if you can lose a championship through wrongdoing within an organisation, that was the thing that I wondered.”
When asked how he managed to move past the entire unfortunate story, Hamilton responded that enjoying time with his family allowed him to forget about that terrible day in Abu Dhabi.
- Toto Wolff Speaks On Men’s Mental Health Issues.
- Bernie Ecclestone indicates that Red Bull’s cost-cap breach will ‘get worse’.
He said: “But I spent time with my family and that was really the best part of the healing really. I just gave all of my time to the kids, building snowmen and just being present with them.
“That enabled me to really recover, really bounce back. If I wasn’t with them, I would have been stuck in a hole.
“I’ve moved on from it. I refuse to live in the past. I have already experienced that in 2007 and, as a youngster, that definitely kept me up at nights and it was just negative.
“When you hold on to some negativity, when you hold on to hate or whatever it is, it is just holding you back.
“I’m going up. And I am going forwards, regardless of what’s happened in the past. I chose not to dwell on it. There is nothing I can do about back then. I gave everything. Like, I gave everything, and I sacrificed.
“But I am willing to do it again. So that’s what I’m trying to work towards.”
