Opinion: Formula 1 ruined what should have been its crowning glory

Article 48.12 of the Formula 1 sporting regulations is a tepid piece of legalese meant to help inform safety car procedures. You should not be interested in its wording or how it is interpreted by race direction, and it certainly shouldn’t be the final deciding factor of one of the greatest championship battles of all time.

Yet, in a moment of peak F1 shenanigans, that is exactly where we find ourselves. We don’t have the space or time to prosecute the minute details of what occurred, so take the time to watch the final 10 laps of the Abu Dhabi grand prix.

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The 2021 Formula 1 season will go down in history as one of the absolute best of all time. The drama was off the charts from the very first round, and never relented all season long, right up until the final corner on the final lap. It must be said that Max Verstappen is a glorious and worthy champion for the sport. Your thoughts on his driving style aside, it is impossible to not recognise his supreme talent and speed. Similarly, Lewis Hamilton has continued to expand his legacy with a season that included some of the greatest racing in his already illustrious career. Either winning the championship in 2021 is a victory for the sport. Well, it would have been, if it had happened under any other circumstance.

Race direction had three perfectly viable options afforded to them in the regulations to see out the championship once Latifi’s Williams clattered the barriers prompting a final safety car period. Red flag the race and have a standing start to the end, restart the race with the lapped cars remaining between Hamilton and Verstappen, or wave those competitors through (all eight of them) and finish under yellow flag conditions. That was the framework available, and yet in a moment that will be seared into the memories of fans for years to come, a fourth middling option was heaved upon us resulting in mass confusion.

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Blame cannot be laid at either team for how they acted in that final race, they fought with the kind of fury befitting people with hundreds of millions of euros invested in the outcome. The issue here sits clearly with the FIA and race direction, which saw what should have been motorsport’s shining moment of glory in the global stage reduced to a squabble over lines in a rulebook that will be decided days, weeks, or even months after the fact. That’s no way to decide a championship.

I thought the worst case scenario for the final race of the 2021 F1 season would be Hamilton and Verstappen colliding at the first turn of the race, both retiring instantly. Somehow, I was wrong. What actually occurred will do reputational damage to the sport and those who run it on a scale that is yet to be fully grasped.

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Hamilton’s team protested what happened, as is their prerogative. The FIA, predictably, didn’t find itself guilty of any wrongdoing. Now, Mercedes-AMG has signalled its intent to fight the decision to the death, lodging a notice of intention to appeal the decision of the Stewards under article blah blah blah. It’s all so disappointing for F1 that its most entertaining championship battle in decades will likely be decided by stuffy men in stuffy suits in a stuffy room in Paris at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. That’s not very good motorsport, is it? The drivers deserved better, and we as fans deserved better.

The sport has robbed itself. Instead of a tense season-long battle between driving titans being rightfully celebrated around the world, the industry will descend into months of debate over interpretations of procedural instructions while pilfering through dense sporting regulations.

The icing on the discombobulated disgrace of a weekend was a tweet from the head of the FIA Jean Todt, congratulating Australian ace Oscar Piastri on his Formula 2 championship victory. Piastri has put together the most impressive and dominant junior single-seater career since Hamilton or Verstappen shot through the ranks, winning three titles on the trot from Renault Eurocup, F3 and F2. Yet the Aussie goes without a full-time seat in F1 in ’22, and Todt has the gall to say he is an illustration that the FIA’s single-seater pyramid works. Do jog on Jean, and sort your house out while you are at it.