Horse 2945 - Villain Defeats Villain For The 2021 F1 World Championship

Max Verstappen is the 2021 Formula One World Champion. Although this is not my ideal outcome for this year (I would have preferred Lewis Hamilton to win the title, claim his 8th World Championship and then retuire), I think that I am fine with this result. In some Formula One seasons you have drivers who are heroes and villains but in 2021 both Lewis and Max played the role of villains and did so in a spirit of maximum spite.

2021 saw Lewis Hamilton, the consummate professional and practically complete grand prix driver, get knocked off the top by Max Verstappen who effectively employed bluster and bravado to good effect. Both drivers are incredibly skilled, both drivers are in very good equipment, and the dog fight back and forth throughout the whole season showed that both drivers refused to lose if they could help it. This season had shades of 2007 about it, where Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso traded blows, with both of those two ultimately failing as Kimi Raikkonnen snatched the championship away for Ferrari. Fittingly, Kimi Raikkonen's last Grand Prix was also at the Abu Dhabi GP where this championship title was decided. 

Some say that it is wrong to compare drivers across eras who ran in vastly different equipment and circumstances but there is no doubt about it, Lewis Hamilton is the greatest Formula One driver of all time. In retrospect, Michael Schumacher who is the other 7-time world champion, scored one of those titles by deliberately taking out his opponent. Hamilton is not without his share of controversy but I do not think that he has actually crossed the line into culpability. Knavery? Yes but not culpability. For Max Verstappen to win this championship on the last lap of the last grand prix of the season, smacks of result engineering to me but it still comes in the context of a very very long season.

The 2021 season can be highlighted by 4 key Grands Prix.

The Belgian GP which lasted all of two laps, was quite frankly a farcical affair which had the two title contenders  taken each other out at the Yas Marina Circuit, would have actually given the championship to Verstappen. That race, started under the safety car and finished under it, had half points awarded because it hadn't gone the full race distance but was given full status as a Grand Prix win; which would have been the thing to split the difference if the point scores had been level.

The Italian GP in which the two title contenders actually did take each other out, proved that Verstappen was prepared to do literally anything if he saw some advantage in doing so and that Hamilton was also prepared to allow no quarter given.

The Saudi Arabian GP was an administrative nonsense; with a series of idiotic steward's decisions; after the race went under safety car conditions several times and both Lewis and Max forced each other off the track and both repeatedly exceeded the track limits. Max's attempted redress which was basically a brake check on Lewis, saw Lewis plough into the back of Max's car and break the front end plate on the wing of his Mercedes. Max's five second time penalty for exceeding track limits, proved to be a worthless penalty in the end.

The Abu Dhabi GP which had that late race safety car, created a one lap shootout after the steward's decided to allow lapped cars to go through. This is not how procedure is done under any other circumstance and it brought Max to the rear of Lewis' car. This was a made for TV moment which is more akin to the purely artificial finish of a NASCAR race; whose organisation openly has little regard for normality.

Those four highlights by magnesium burning brighter than the rest of the season, have outshone the fact that we had Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes-Benz which has fallen off the very top of the mountain and Max Verstappen who was probably in a better car but who isn't as good a driver. Those two things combined probably left us with two driver/car combinations which were separated by less than the width of a cigarette paper.

I do not think that motor racing fans can complain that much about this season. We had two drivers both going at it; with a result that went down to the wire. We had other winners this year who made their contribution. We even had comedy numpty (and decidedly racist fool) Nikita Maze🅱️pin who repeatedly proved that he didn't deserve to be in Formula One but had sufficient funds to buy a ride.

I think that I am fine with Max Verstappen being the 2021 World Champion, despite and maybe in spite of the fact that I do not like him. In the grand narrative of Formula One, that now sets him up to be knocked off the top pedestal, either by Lewis Hamilton who will probably want revenge, or by someone else who will be a dark horse and come in from the outside. That can either be Sergio Perez in the other Red Bull, George Russell who will be joining Mercedes and replacing Valtteri Bottas, or maybe one of the Ferraris or McLarens. I do not think that Alpine, Alfa Romeo or Aston Martin are good enough to challenge for the World Championship but they may pop up for the odd GP win in 2022.