Lewis will be hungry to fight for title No.8 after desert shambles
LEWIS HAMILTON stood next to the new Mercedes W13 at the team’s Brackley headquarters wearing a contented smile two days ago. If the prospect of driving the gleaming machinery was the primary reason for the grin, then the ditching of Michael Masi as Formula One’s race director cannot have been far behind.
But for Masi’s back-of-a-fagpacket rule-making in the final race of last season, Hamilton would already have surpassed Michael Schumacher in the record books and gone down in history as Formula One’s greatest driver.
Masi has now paid the price.
The Australian’s exit will not bring back Hamilton’s world championship but the debacle he oversaw should have lit a roaring fire inside the outwardly phlegmatic Briton to ensure justice this season.
At Hamilton’s stage of his professional life, about to enter season number 16 in the F1 cockpit, fresh motivation is essential.
As a rookie, the drive came from proving himself, from showing that a kid from a Stevenage council estate could beat the world.
In the autumn of his career, with 103 race wins under his belt and more money than he could ever spend, it is not as straightforward to find the inner desire to make the sacrifices every champion needs to.
The drama in the desert – and the determination not to be defined by it – provides that spark.the blow that brought him to his knees can serve as his inspiration.
There was a point, post-abu Dhabi, that some at Mercedes wondered if that was the last Formula One would see of Hamilton. It would have been a sad way to go. Instead, after some time to reflect, he comes across as revived and hungry to go again. There is a score to settle here, if not with the champion Maxverstappen who, for all his tunnel vision throughout a dramatic season, was blameless in the denouement – but with the sport itself.
Formula One is by definition simple – first car to the chequered flag wins – yet at the same time pea-soup foggy in its complexity.
Regulatory interpretation has always played its part both in close-to-the-wind design innovations and even sketchier racing incidents but the game has always been about bending the rules, not ignoring them completely.
Hamilton was done in cold blood in Abu Dhabi.
As he had done from lap one, he was leading whenwilliams’ Nicholas Latifi crashed five laps from the end of the race. Out came the safety car.
In what looked like desperation to avoid a procession finish, a cart and horses was driven through the rule book with only the five cars in between the two main protagonists allowed to unlap themselves before the safety car was then brought in to trigger a one-lap shootout for the title.
What made it worse from Mercedes’ point of view was the audio recording subsequently released of Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley seemingly coaching Masi in how to run the race.
Hamilton claimed the race had been manipulated. Masi’s departure after an FIA investigation is a tacit admission that things went badly wrong.
Nobody has officially said so – only that Masi (below) will be moving to another position within the organisation – but nobody has to.the FIA’S treatment of Masi pointed a great big arrow at him for the shambles.
This season, in a sensible move, direct communication for the team managers to Masi’s two replacements during races will be outlawed.
The cars too will be markedly different, with the slate wiped as clean as it ever has been mechanically for the teams.with the sport’s new regulations, the steering wheel is just about all that survives of last year’s Mercedes.
It is all about looking forward but Hamilton will never be able to erase Abu Dhabi fully until the circle is closed and he becomes world champion again.
It is unfair to judge seven titles as a ‘what if’ career but in his heart of hearts Hamilton knows that the nature of last season’s controversial ending will inevitably render
it so unless he can set the record straight.
At 37 he will not have too many more chances.
The quest for No.8 begins anew.