I don't understand whats happening here. I don't know what angle the Max fans are coming from. Your guy won. He did nothing wrong.
But the way he won tarnished his win (not through his fault) and the rules were broken. Whats the argument here?
To be quite honest, there are some Max fans on here who are arguing it only because they don’t want there to be a mark against his win. That’s why you get arguments constantly from them about “RB also had decisions against them throughout the season” or “Max clearly had the slower car” or “win some lose some” or “FIA have favoured Mercedes with rule changes for years” or x y and z.
I wanted Hamilton to win, but if I’m trying to be as objective as I can, I would draw the key points that:
- Max has been very good throughout the year. Just because Masi stitched everyone up in the last race doesn’t mean his work over the season should be completely ignored. He is deserving on balance because he was right up there with Hamilton all year.
- Unfortunately that doesn’t change the fact that if the rules had been applied, or that he didn’t receive a significant amount of luck with the safety car happening in the first place, he would not be world champion.
- The key issue here is sporting integrity. New precedents were set outside of normal practice and potentially outside the rule book to create a last lap spectacle. This isn’t right. You don’t reset goals in a CL final if one team is winning it “bigly” just to create drama.
- Linking to the above, it’s fundamentally a flawed decision what he did. Forget Hamilton vs Max, why does Sainz for example not get a shot at 2nd or even 1st by being stuck behind lapped cars, but the same hinderance isn’t applied to Max who gets a free run? It’s inconsistency not only with rules and past precedent, but inconsistent treatment to different racers in the same race. I really feel this is significant because it completely against fair competition, which must be the overriding principal of sport. Every driver should have an equal chance to win a race, regardless of where they are in the standings or how much money their team has or how good their car is. That principal was fundamentally lost yesterday.
- If the safety car rules were followed properly, and that last lap existed in the rules, then yeah I’d be annoyed at the bad luck but that’s what it would be. Just bad luck. Legal (and perhaps rules should be considered if it’s really fair), and bad luck. I think then the complaint would be about the rules in the first place which sees leads wiped out by safety cars (whichever race, whichever cars impacted) than a breach of them. But you could only complain about that. Not the integrity of the result.
- If roles had reversed and Hamilton had won the title like this, of course I’d be happy but I wouldn’t (I think, like some fans on here) be in denial about what happened. That luck gave my man the title. And not just luck, unfair sports. Illegal sports. I’d accept that, and frankly whilst being happy I’d still be annoyed that the title was won that way and still have serious questions about the FIA.
- Masi needs to be removed. I can accept mistakes (and all fans on all sides have had to accept mistakes all year). But only to a limit. There has simply been far too many this year. Questionable decisions in Jeddah on penalties. Poor communication in Jeddah leading to the confusion and the brake test. Questionable decision yesterday when Hamilton kept the lead running wide. That’s just in the last 3 races. So that’s not acceptable. What’s also not acceptable at all, is rewriting rules and setting new precedent for entertainment.
