Nicholas Latifi is mentioned a lot when creating a turning point in the race between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.
Nicholas Latifi was promised by the Red Bull team to give the gift of “drinking energy drinks for life”, after contributing to helping Max Verstappen win the 2021 season. Photo: F1
In the ongoing debate about whether Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton is the most worthy winner of the 2021 F1 season, behind-the-scenes issues have been talked about. When it’s a behind-the-scenes story, there are certainly doubts…
One of the doubts behind Verstappen’s victory is that he had help from another racing team, in which Nicholas Latifi’s crash created the turning point. Did the Canadian racer have any intention with that crash?
In the race in Abu Dhabi , Hamilton led most of the way and advanced to his 8th world championship. However, with 6 laps left, at turn 7, the car of the 26-year-old Williams driver crashed into the security fence. At that time, the arrival of the safety car is needed to wait for the FW43B to be cleared to make the track safe.
The accident of the Williams team driver in the final stages was a major turning point for the championship race. Photo: CMH
Meanwhile, Verstappen took advantage of that opportunity to enter the pitstop and change to soft tires in the hope of overtaking Hamilton. Not only that, the Dutch driver also received a gift with a green light signal requiring the cars between him and Hamilton to give way to create a direct race in the final laps. The British racer’s 11-second advantage was thereby narrowed. What happened next is history…
The question is, did Latifi intentionally act like that to help Verstappen? Red Bull team head Christian Horner said he would give Latifi the gift of “drinking Red Bull for life”, but of course, it was not an affirmation that this driver wanted to help Verstappen win the championship.
The comments made are just speculations, while Latifi himself has just spoken out. Latifi explained that he was competing with Mick Schumacher of the Haas team during the lap in which he crashed, and got a dirty tire after going off the road in turn 9.
“We really struggled to hang on through the next series of corners, and especially the one where I went out,” Latifi said. It was a tough corner all weekend for me, the tires were dirty, the space was dirty and I made mistakes.
I didn’t know about the race situation until then. Obviously I never intended to affect that, but I made a mistake and ruined my own race.”
However, in addition to some controversial decisions of the organizers, Lewis Hamilton’s “too forgiving” is also said to be part of the reason why he lost to Max Verstappen. Photo: F1
In fact, if there is a reason to influence, Latifi will have to lean more towards Hamilton, because first, Williams is the UK racing team – Hamilton’s hometown. Second, his teammate this season, George Russell, will become Hamilton’s teammate at the Mercedes team next season. And third, how does Latifi know what will happen next when his car crashes, because Verstappen is still quite far away from Hamilton…
Instead, the decision to restart with 1 lap remaining was a point of contention post-race after Mercedes chose to protest to the marshals. Mercedes side said that F1 Director, Michael Masi, did not follow the rules by continuing the existing results but asked to reverse the results in the penultimate round, which would have helped Hamilton win the championship .
Besides, there is also the question of whether Sergio Perez – Verstappen’s teammate, running to restrain Hamilton during the Dutch driver’s pitstop was fair play? Furthermore, Hamilton himself was considered “too good” to not react at times to his opponent’s aggressive driving style.
