The big talking point of the British GP was the incident involving Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen at turn 9 on Lap 1.
Max, of course, entered the race with a 33pt lead in the Drivers Championship. Lewis needed to cut that. So it’s a slam dunk right?? Lewis took Max out and went on to win the race. Max’s lead now 8pts. Lewis at fault. No brainer.
There is certainly legitimacy to say Lewis HAD to do something in this race. Max was quite literally driving off into the distance. When the two came together, Max came of worse, careening into the barriers at around 180mph, suffering a 57G impact. It was lucky he wasn’t seriously hurt. All of this backs up argument number one. Lewis at fault. No brainer.
However, start breaking down the circumstances around the crash and things get an awful lot more difficult.
Yes, absolutely, Lewis was being EXTREMELY aggressive in hunting Max down on the first lap. He had to. If Max had preserved his lead, then he would have just been able to pull away just as in the Sprint race the day before. So Lewis knew he had to go into the race all guns blazing. On the approach to turn 9, Lewis dove up the inside of the Red Bull, trying to claim the inside line of the corner. You could see from the on-board cameras that Max knew exactly where he was. You could see his head obsessively looking in the right hand mirror as Lewis was approaching.
The other thing that Lewis was doing was leaving a gap to his right, knowing this would squeeze Max to the ‘no mans land’, pushing him wide through the upcoming corner while still leaving the cars width that the rules demand. This is not a new tactic. You put your opponent in a part of the track that will force them to do something different to what they intended. Make their life difficult.
Just before the corner, Lewis knew he was not going to get past and backed out. Not by much, but you can see his car dramatically tail off just as they’re turning in.
Max similarly knew that Lewis had no way through and attempted to very aggressively close the door on him. No way through buddy, not this time.
It was here that, I believe, both drivers were at fault. Lewis had backed off, but not enough whereby the Red Bull could successfully re-establish itself on the racing line around turn 9. Max turned in to cut Lewis off, likely assuming that he would have fully backed away and didn’t check before heavily spinning the steering wheel to the right. The result was Lewis’ front left hitting Max’s rear right, sending the Dutchman into the barriers.
The stewards said that Lewis was to blame for the crash because he had plenty of room to his right in order to take the apex of the corner. As such, he could have avoided the accident. This, to me, shows the stewards were reacting way more to the impact on Max as opposed to the incident itself.
It is, of course, absolutely true that Lewis DID have more room to his right. However, as much as he knew that he wasn’t going to make the pass that lap, he was also perfectly entitled to make Max’s life difficult. If Max hadn’t turned in so aggressively, he would have been off the racing line but still would have made it around the outside of the corner and held position. It would have been difficult and he certainly would have had less traction as a result, but he could have made it. Equally, Lewis could have FULLY backed out of the corner, expecting Max to chop across him given that Max has somewhat of a reputation for such moves.
So, to my mind, it’s a racing incident and I lost no sleep at all about the fact that Lewis still won the race despite being given a 10s time penalty.
Way, WAY worse moves/blocks/fudged passes have been attempted in F1. Some have been successful, some haven’t. But that is hard racing and what the fans want to see. Of course I don’t want to see anyone get hurt as a result. But sometimes accidents happen. Neither driver was free of blame in this case. There will inevitably be similar situations in the future. I just hope the stewards don’t do anything to stop hard racing.
