Formula 1 Round 22 Abu Dhabi GP

We've already been down that slippery slope before when Fontana in the Sauber-Ferrari held up Villeneuve to help Schumacher at Jerez in 1997. Gets forgotten about because of what happened later in the race.

Regulations say after providing the message for lapped cars to unlap, the safety car will come in at the end of the following lap.

The safety car came in at the end of the same lap. Had it followed regulations, the race ends under safety car and Hamilton wins the race and title.

For the safety car to come in on the lap it did, the lapped cars should have been left where they were - which would have put 5 cars between Hamilton and Max - Max still would have had a great chance of catching and passing, but not as easy as it was made for him by mangling the rules as Masi did.

That regulation never applied in this case as it can only come into effect if all cars have been told to unlap themselves. This message was never sent out so 48.12 never applied.

The message "LAPPED CARS MAY NOW OVERTAKE" was never sent to all cars so it never applied.

Mercedes have withdrawn their appeal. Great news for all involved and a line can be drawn under what myself and others consider a fake controversy.

Congrats to Max. And there's definitely a need to both clear up rules or communicate them better to the occasional F1 fan who was left confused by what happened.

Weighing up the possibility of being beaten by George Russell and the possibility of Mercedes being less dominant under the new regs no doubt.

I wonder who'd be on their radar if he does quit. Would be amazing to see Piastri get the drive, not sure how airtight his reserve driver contract with Alpine is. De Vries is the more obvious choice I guess.

I was pretty surprised earlier in the season when they announced that Russell was joining the team to be honest, I expected Lewis to insist on Bottas being there for the remainder of his career. The last time Lewis had a team-mate other than Bottas he was beaten, and you'd expect George to be at least as good as Nico was.

Russel is very fast, and eager to prove that. What better way of doing that then by going up against a 7 time champion like Hamilton? Russel has been part of the Merc family for a long time as well, so I doubt he will be kept back too much, if at all.

Its at the clerk of the course's discretion when the safety car comes in. Whether people think its irregular or not is beside the point. Most people know this, Mercedes know it, these are the rules they signed up to and agreed to along with letting them race. If they don't like the rules, they know where the door is.

There was no reason to bring in the safety car earlier and zero reason to leave it out for the final lap. Bad enough as the controversy was, it would have been far worse if he left the safety car out to the end. That would really ruin the integrity of the sport.

Anyways its time to draw a line under it. The Brits will continue to whine about it no doubt, well those who never watched a formula 1 race before and don't understand fully the rules.

On the plus side, if he does retire there's a good chance you'll be watching 2 Dutch World Champions race each other at Zandvoort.

Hopefully he makes a quick recovery. With the way omicron is going there'll barely be anybody in the paddock who hasn't had it by the start of next season. Fortunate that relatively few races were missed by anyone during the year.

Last season Lewis himself was saying no guarantee of returning for 2021 and of course he came back. Don’t think he’s the type to finish on such a close loss, one shy of the record when still close to his peak.

Think Merc just want Masi’s head to roll which may already be in the pipeline for all we know.

Nobody, Lineker included thinks Abu Dhabi was the entire championship...Lineker simply used one race/GP/incident to make a point, albeit a point that was too balck and white....but it was deliberately black and white. He's no fool. Filks reading too much int his deliberate/intentional exaggeration

With all due respect this post is a pile of turd!

Not really no, that was an incident during a knock out game, not an incident during a league game. If it were the last game of a premiership season then I could see irony.