What The F1?

I've just watched the final race of the F1 season and I'm not sure exactly what I've just witnessed. It was already set up to be a one-race showdown this year between Hamilton, looking for his eighth world championship to surpass Michael Schumacher's seven; and Verstappen looking for his first title after a tremendous season's racing, finally sewing up a deserved debut championship. If previous races have thrown up controversy, this one's finale did it in spades, doubled and redoubled.

We've seen races - and championships - finish behind the safety car before, but the decision, apparently made in haste by the race directors, to let some of the lapped cars through - those between Hamilton and Verstappen  - and then restart the race immediately for the final lap. That this  decision came immediately after Red Bull questioned an initial decision not to let the lapped cars through in order that there was time left to finish with a racing lap.

If all of the lapped cars had been let through as per normal practice, the race would have finished behind the safety car, giving Hamilton his only best chance of winning, given that Mercedes had played the race tactically on old tyres and gained a sufficient racing advantage to have won easily before the safety car incident. At it stood, Red Bull's opting to pit for fresh soft tyres under the safety car paid off, if somewhat aided by the sudden change of protocol thrown into the ring at the last minute.

Call me an old cynic, but I smell a rat here. That the championship went down to the wire is one thing, and previous controversial judgements have been made, but on balance it's been a pretty straight fight from the two best drivers in the world, driving the two best cars in the world, resulting in the last race showdown. It just strikes me that someone saw the opportunity afforded by the late race safety car, to spice up the championship by bringing it down to a one lap sprint with no back marker traffic in the way; a sprint that given the disparity in tyres, could only end one way: Sponsorship 1, Hamilton 0.

I'm not so churlish as to deny that Max Verstappen deserves the title he's looked set to win since his debut, but the race was effectively taken out of the drivers' hands at the most critical moment imaginable. This is not good for F1. This is not good for sport. It needs a rethink, otherwise a sporting world of all-in Wrestling and Rollerball beckons, bleeding the boundaries between fact and fiction to the point where the only thing that matters is the money.