By Elias

’25

As you might have noticed, throughout the season, there were many controversial decisions made between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton which have now had a major effect on the World cup. This will explain and evaluate these decisions, in addition to a short comparison between RedBull and Mercedes winning the championship with two races to go. 

The first controversial incident I will disguise is Bottas’ crash in Hungary, which is now having an effect on the championship. 

After a bad start, Bottas misjudged his braking into turn one; rear-ending the McLaren of Lando Norris who smashed into the sides of Max Verstappen’s RedBull, while Bottas was carried into Perez’s RedBull, kicking him out of the race. Verstappen continued with a heavily damaged car and only finished 10th. The heavy hit from the McLaren caused heavy damage to his bargeboard and floor, making his downforce worse than the Haas. This incident made RedBull fall behind Mercedes in the constructor’s championship, and Verstappen’s 32 point lead shrinks to a 7 point deficit. This was the second time Verstappen had lost a huge point advantage without him actually doing something wrong. Examples of this is the tyre failure in Azerbaijan which cost him the victory, as well as the controversial crash in Silverstone with Title-rival Lewis Hamilton – which will be discussed later on. Max Verstappen did not admit that this incident changed anything as, it states “it’s a lot of freak moments which cost us a lot of points. Of course, Mercedes are very quick but we will never give up. We have to focus on ourselves, we keep pushing and we’ll see where we end up.” Hornor mentioned dryly that Bottas did a great job for Mercedes. The decision of the stewards was a 5 place grid penalty and 2 licence penalty points, which was very little, as the damage he had done to other cars were severe. However, with the new FIA rule being that no incident will be judged on whether it had an effect on the title fight or not, it is still very little. The Stewards said that they took the conditions into consideration, but found Botas fully guilty of the crash. This incident had come at a big cost for RedBull. As it made multi-million dollar damage on both cars with the complete down floor damaged by max and a completely new engine needed for Perez. Horner also did not accept the apology of Toto Wolff (team-Manager of Mercedes), but he said in an interview “look, it’s racing, Toto wasn’t driving the car, his driver was driving the car. I’m sure he didn’t tell him to crash into RedBull. I’m sure he wasn’t that sorry to see the result, but I’m sure he didn’t tell Valtteri to do that. (Christian Horner). It is the second race in a row that RedBull had to pay the price, financially and in the championship with Mercedes. “Obviously it was my mistake, I was the one coming from behind. It’s up to me to break early enough but I misjudged the braking point. It shows it’s not so easy in those conditions to predict but I should have braked earlier. I was closing in and locked the wheels and hit Lando and that caused the whole mess” (Valteri Bottas). This is possibly the easiest conclusion any driver who causes a chunt will come to.

Max and Lewis crash in Silverstone

Looking at the racing line, Max Verstappen gave Lewis Hamilton just enough space to make the corner. This did not happen as Lewis Hamilton slightly misjudged the Apex and got a bit of understeer, forcing him out of his racing line. Some could argue that it was a racing incident as Lewis Hamilton did have more contribution to this crash than max, but a racing incident does not require a 50/50 contribution. However this is also underlined by the stewards, as the penalty for such a big crash was very little (10-second penalty).  It is normal for Max not to back out of a wheel to wheel battle, but considering that he had such a big point advantage and the better car in race-trim he would have gotten better away with backing out. 

Lewis, on the other hand, is known to be more gentle but then fights back on a different day. He said after the race that he does not want to back down and he doesn’t want to be bullied on track. Given what he was saying and how he drove differently this time when these two have been on track together this season, Lewis might have tried to prove a point to Max that he can’t always play with him like this. This incident was not only that Hamilton decided out of nothing to fight back: it had a lot of backdrops, which you can see in races where Hamilton did back down to avoid a collision (ex. Spanish Grand Prix opening lap). As mentioned earlier, Max is not the driver to back down and he isn’t obligated either, meaning both drivers were able to avoid it; neither chooses to do so. RedBull did not see this as a racing incident and was putting aggressive pressure on Lewis’s punishment, by using words like “dirty driving, desperate” and even suggested that he should get a race ban. Of course, Max found it highly disrespectful from Lewis to celebrate in full joy when your rival has hit the barriers with 51G because of you. In my opinion, Max’s response was very understandable as he was fighting to be world champion and then being completely out of the race, and a rival only receiving a 10-second penalty is very frustrating. I can also understand the view of the team, as they put so much effort into the car and then watched how the driver got sent off in the first laps of the race. The way RedBull dragged it on made them look bad but I believe Lewis did not do this on purpose. 

The next incident is the clash between Max Verstappen and Lewis in Italy on the circuit of Monza. 

Right at the start of the race, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton are in the first fight. Max Verstappen has gone on the inside but both are super late on the brakes while coming into turn 3. What we can see here is that both drivers are exactly alongside each other. It is crucial for the driver on the inside to and maintain this “just being ahead” of the driver on the outside. If the outside driver is ahead, they control the corner and it gets nearly impossible to fight back without a collision. This is because the driver on the outside has more grip and it also does not allow them to push the other driver wide. So what Max is probably doing here is rolling off the brake pedal so that he can stay ahead and force Lewis Hamilton wide. This happened like this but Verstappen missed the apex by half a car’s width. 

At this point, it is very clear that Verstappen is ahead and made the move stick. This can be seen as he is moving to the outside as his trajectory is not on the typical race line that is used most commonly and also in this photo by Lando Norris and Daniel Riccardo behind them. Whether this is fair or not depends on your position as a fan or as a driver. I see this as a racing incident as no major crash has followed, even though Hamilton had to go over the curves to avoid one. This was also seen before at Imola in the wet race proving Hamilton’s point of being bullied a bit.

This picture was taken shortly before the crash. Hamilton had just come out of the pits wearing medium compound tires and Max had already done a lap or two on his hard compound tires and was already up to speed with heat in his tires. He tried to send it around the outside. Lewis made the apex, unlike Max at the beginning of the race.

Max’s perspective

From Max’s perspective: Hamilton had just come out of the pits. Max had just a terrible pit stop, costing him around 10 to 11 seconds. In my opinion, Max has done everything right, as Lewis gave him enough space to risk it on the outside. The advantage of this is that Lewis couldn’t squeeze Max the whole corner and so eventually had to give him space to not slide off. There was also a risk involved, though. If Lewis closed the gap too much, it would have sent Max onto the curbs, possibly damaging his car and/or sending him flying as we saw it. After the start of the Corner, Max also had no other possibility as he was trapped between Lewis’ front and back tire, which can be seen in this image. 

In this position, there is not much more space down the right side. Perhaps he could have gone a little bit closer, but it was very dangerous. Verstappen could have gone a bit slower into the orange sausage curb, as you could expect the front end of the car being lifted and creating understeer. This would cause the rear end of the car to slide across and force him wide, meaning that he crashed into Lewis. This is also most likely the reason why he received a penalty. However, it is a very difficult thing to judge, even when you look at it in slow motion. In addition to this, it was critical for Verstappen to get back past Hamilton at this point in the race, as Hamilton had the softer tyre, which would have made him able to extend his lead so that Verstappen would not be able to catch him. 

Hamilton’s perspective

Hamilton has positioned himself perfectly, forcing Max onto the outside, otherwise he would give the position up for nothing. As Lewis was arguably a bit fairer in this battle than Verstappen was at the beginning of the race or in Imola by hitting the apex, it allows Max to continue this battle into the next corner. I believe that if Lewis would have been a bit more aggressive, it would have forced Max wide and Lewis would have won the position easily. As Lewis had done so before, I don’t really see why he didn’t do it this time. The only explanation is that turns 1 and 2 are very tight. Forcing someone wide makes the second corner very hard to take, as there is barely any room and might also send you off track when you lose grip. In addition to this, Mercedes had also a more high speed-focused car in comparison to the RedBull, meaning that their rear wing was smaller and gave the car less downforce. 

So whose fault was the contact?

As you can see, after the crash both drivers had to retire from the Race. On this occasion I personally believe that it was a racing incident, because both drivers actually made no mistakes; just the sausage curb made them crash.  The steward saw it differently and thought Max Verstappen was too aggressive and punished him with a 5 place grid penalty for the next race. As mentioned before, it was a “very hard move to judge”. This quote from Toto Wolff summed it up very well. 

In conclusion, I think both drivers have made some risky moves with potential high output. This keeps the sport very interesting and fun to watch

Who will be the Winner of the 2021 championship? 

Mercedes: In recent races, Mercedes has shown incredible straigh line speed, which was thought to be gained by the new combustion engine that Hamilton had had. These rumors turned out to be false as the new engine was just a ner burner and could maxil add an amount of 5 hours power after the Brazilian Grand Prix, even though Max Verstappen had won the Grand Prix. Photos of The Mercedes cars rear being very close to the ground, allowing them to create less downforce were taken during this Grand Prix.   

(This picture shows the W12 rear end sinking quit dramatically)

This suggests that Mercedes have no engine gain, but a trick ‘System’.  Mercedes teamwolf Totto Wolff, said that the engine did not get an upgrade, which can be seen in this quote “”You are being fed with a lot of bullsh**, but the questions are interesting.”(Toto Wolff). When RedBull found out about this, Totto Wolff responded by saying that they were great stories and great narratives, but hinted that Mercedes AMG Petronas found a way to increase straight line speed. The backdrop to this, Mercedes looked to have a straight line speed advantage in the beginning of the season, but in Austria and France RedBull looked superior. Since then, Mercedes have seemed to establish its advantage with the new aero package from silverstone. A quote from Toto wolff: “What I enjoy watching is the intellectual process in the team around how to hit the sweet spot. Obviously we’ve introduced that upgrade in Silverstone and since then have comprehended every race a little bit better how to extract the maximum performance. Since Sochi, then in Turkey, and also here, it proves to be definitely the right path.” This suggests that Mercedes had a major breakthrough since the start of the second part of the season.

So what is Mercedes really doing? 

As the rear diffuser of an F1 car is coming closer to the ground, the airflow under it gets faster and faster till it can’t move fast enough, reducing drag and downforce of a car. The reason why RedBull cant do this, is because the W12 from Mercedes is a low rake car, and the RB16B is a high rake car, which does not allow RedBull to stall the airflow. 

RedBull had since its engine upgrade no bigger breakthrough, meaning that RedBull is faster in the tracks with high speed corners, as they produce more downforce, but otherwise they are significantly behind Mercedes.  

In my opinion, Max Verstappen is the better driver, but there is only a certain amount that a driver can do before reaching the car’s limit. As Mercedes developed such a strong car, and Lewis still arguably the second best driver on the field, I think he and Mercedes (unfortunately) will be able to get the title. Hamilton has also a lot of previous experience in this, giving him a slight advantage, but Max Verstappen has also matured in the last years since he joined formula 1 in 2016, making it one of the most interesting battles for the Championship ever.