RBR say the 2nd protest has not been upheld... Max is Champion and I guess Merc are going to court. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I'm a Lewis fan and don't approve of Max's intimidation tactics on track, but any decision other than letting the race result stand is simply bogus. Perhaps we can all agree on dumping Masi as Race Director? A ban on teams initiating communication with Race Control during the race wouldn't hurt either....
At the end of the day F1 is a team sport and today Red Bull made the best team decisions that lead to the opportunity to win and they did. Say what you will about officiating but every sport has officials that have to make decisions on the fly which some love and some hate. Go through this season and a long list of decisions that ultimately helped one team over another happened.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/video/2018/sep/09/serena-williams-calls-umpire-a-liar-and-thief-as-naomi-osaka-wins-us-open-final-video
I knew these protests didn't stand a snowball's chance in the Arabian desert. Congrats Max on a great season. You are World Champion.
This part is one we seem to forget this was months in the making. This one race and one error isn't what won Max the title.
In retrospect, I suspect the sequence of weirdness was that they figured that letting all the cars unlap would result in the race ending under yellow. But then the five intervening cars got packed up. We've seen that it's nearly impossible for the car at the back of a line to get around if there's no room in front. E.g. Leclerc was stuck behind Riccardo all those laps, because Ric was on Ocon(?)'s tail. With five cars nose-to-tail, it'd be impossible for Max to get around without four or five laps to unpack the group. So they might as well have finished under yellow. But they figured, "if the cars are that close, let just those five more around, and finish as a race". And a race we got.
Mercedes: We only agree to finish the race under green if Hamilton is ahead. What a bunch of sore losers my lord…lol