Draft: a fan’s take. Check the details and make it your own before publishing.
For most of the hybrid era, Mercedes won almost everything. Lewis Hamilton had seven world titles, level with Michael Schumacher, and 2021 was meant to be number eight. Then Red Bull and Honda finally built a car that could match the Mercedes, and Max Verstappen was ready for it.
What followed was the best title fight I’ve watched: two drivers at their absolute peak, neither willing to give an inch, going into the last race exactly level on points.
A fight from race one
The tone was set in Bahrain. Max passed Lewis late in the race but did it with all four wheels off the track at turn 4, so Red Bull told him to give the place back. Lewis won by less than a second.
The early season swung back and forth. Max won at Imola. Lewis won in Portugal and Spain. In Monaco Max won while Lewis struggled to seventh, and Max took the championship lead for the first time in his career.
Baku
Azerbaijan should have been a big win for Max. He was leading with a handful of laps left when his left-rear tyre failed on the main straight. At the restart Lewis, right at the front, locked up into turn 1 after accidentally knocking a brake setting switch on his steering wheel, and went straight on. Neither of them scored. Sergio Pérez won.
Red Bull’s summer
France was the race that made me think Red Bull could actually do this. Max made an extra pit stop, chased Lewis down on fresher tyres and passed him on the second-to-last lap. Then he won both races at the Red Bull Ring, in Styria and Austria, and went to Silverstone 32 points ahead.
Silverstone and Copse
On the first lap of the British Grand Prix they went side by side into Copse, one of the fastest corners on the calendar. They touched, and Max hit the barrier at around 51g. He was taken to hospital for checks and was thankfully okay.
Lewis got a 10-second penalty for the collision, served it, and still won, passing Charles Leclerc with two laps to go. It cut Max’s lead to eight points, and the rivalry was never friendly again.
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Hungary to Monza
In Hungary, Valtteri Bottas started a first-corner pile-up in the wet that damaged Max’s car. Esteban Ocon won the race, Lewis finished second after an odd restart where he was the only car on the grid, and he took the championship lead back.
Spa was barely a race at all: heavy rain, a few laps behind the safety car, and half points for Max, who had qualified on pole. A week later he won at Zandvoort in front of his home crowd.
The halo
At Monza they collided again, this time at the first chicane. Max’s car ended up on top of Lewis’s, with a rear wheel resting on his halo. Both were out, and Max got a three-place grid penalty for the next race. That halo is a big part of why Lewis walked away. Daniel Ricciardo won the race, which I’ve written about separately.
Lewis fights back
Lewis took his 100th Grand Prix win in Russia. Bottas won in Turkey. Max won in Austin and Mexico City and looked like he had it under control.
Brazil changed that. Lewis was disqualified from Friday qualifying over his rear wing, then took an engine penalty on top. He went from last to fifth in the sprint and from tenth to first on Sunday. It’s one of the best drives I’ve seen from him.
He won again in Qatar and again in a chaotic first race in Saudi Arabia, full of restarts, penalties and a collision when Max slowed in front of him. They arrived in Abu Dhabi on exactly 369.5 points each.
Abu Dhabi
Lewis got the better start and controlled the race. With five laps left, Nicholas Latifi crashed and the safety car came out. Max pitted for fresh soft tyres. Lewis stayed out on old hard tyres, because pitting would have cost him the lead.
Then came the decision everyone still argues about. Race director Michael Masi first said lapped cars wouldn’t be allowed to overtake the safety car. Then he let only the five lapped cars between Lewis and Max through, and restarted the race with one lap to go. On fresh tyres, Max passed Lewis into turn 5 and held him off to win the race and his first world championship.
The aftermath
Mercedes protested, the protests were dismissed, and they chose not to appeal. The FIA’s review later called it a “human error”, and Masi was replaced as race director before the next season.
Max went on to win the next three titles too. Lewis didn’t win another Grand Prix until Silverstone in 2024.
However you feel about the ending, I don’t think the season needs an asterisk. Both of them drove at a level we rarely see, all year, and either would have been a worthy champion.