Max Verstappen of the Netherlands celebrates with members of his Red Bull team after winning the Formula One Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Photo / AP
Max Verstappen of the Netherlands celebrates with members of his Red Bull team after winning the Formula One Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Photo / AP
Amid all Toto Wolff's lobbying of the race director, and all Mercedes' desperate efforts to have the result of a stupefying Abu Dhabi Grand Prix overturned, one essential fact remains. It is that Max Verstappen is the rightful world champion at the climax of the wildest, most tumultuous season Formula One has ever known.
Fortune has a habit of evening itself out in this sport. And while Wolff gnashed his teeth and ripped off his expensive headset, everybody at Red Bull saw the astounding final-lap theatre as karmic retribution for decisions that had already gone against their driver. "Finally, a bit of luck," gasped Verstappen, as his achievement in quelling Lewis Hamilton's mighty challenge began to dawn. "For me."
Little did Verstappen know that the fulfilment of his life's work would take another four hours to be officially confirmed. Even though Hamilton and his father Anthony had offered their congratulations, Mercedes were not finished with him yet, enlisting litigation lawyer Paul Harris QC in their scramble to strip him of the title. In their eyes, Verstappen's madcap burst to glory from behind the safety car was the sourest way of concluding an epic drama spanning nine months and 22 races. It was not half as ghastly, though, as the prospect of the FIA awarding the Dutchman his prize before a vast worldwide audience and then deciding, after several late-night hearings behind closed doors, to give it to somebody else.
Red Bull driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands celebrates with his team after he became the world champion. Photo / AP
There is an easy temptation, given the acrimony around Verstappen's snatching of a victory that looked for 57 laps like a lost cause, to portray his championship as somehow tainted. But this does him the gravest disservice. He won the most races this year, amassed the most pole positions, led the most laps, and was on the podium more times than any other driver in F1 history. If consistency is the defining virtue of a champion, then he delivered it in abundance. He also showed superlative race-craft to shade the last-lap shoot-out as Hamilton defended for all his worth.
It is a great pity the fall-out has become so toxic, when the two central protagonists took their talents to such heights under the fading desert sun. All year, this pair have been fighting a different competition to everybody else, with Valtteri Bottas 161.5 points down the road in third. In Abu Dhabi their pre-eminence was plain for all to see, with Hamilton stealing a march through his lightning start and Verstappen striking back with his stunningly opportunistic finish. This was a duel that deserved to be resolved purely on the track, not dragged out in conference rooms with lawyers scouring arcane pieces of FIA sporting code.
If Mercedes have their way, the dispute will be left smouldering through the winter. They have confirmed their intention to appeal, drawing short shrift from Christian Horner, who has pledged to fight them in the courts if required. Once, the sniping between the two team principals was a largely pantomime affair. Now, it threatens to become truly poisonous. A euphoric Horner, still soaked with champagne, initially suggested he would seek out Wolff to bury the hatchet. Instead, Wolff mustered Mercedes' full legal arsenal to try to have Verstappen's triumph struck from the book. That is not a tactic that will be easily forgotten or forgiven.
Red Bull team chief Christian Horner shakes hands with Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain after his driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands, right, celebrates. Photo / AP
The innocent party in these machinations was Hamilton, who was grace personified on the most gut-wrenching night of his career. He has not been averse to voicing conspiracy theories when it has suited him, but somehow, as an eighth world title slipped from his clutches in a madcap finale, he had the decency to salute Verstappen in defeat. Would that Wolff could have shown the same acceptance. Instead, as early as lap 37 – long before the unforgettable closing act – he was on the radio to director Michael Masi, pleading for there not to be a safety car. It was a level of interference in the race that should never have been tolerated.
Horner is no angel on this front either. He was haranguing Masi to allow the drivers between Hamilton and Verstappen to unlap themselves before the safety car peeled in, even as the Australian was working to remove the wreckage of Nicolas Latifi's Williams from harm's way. Even if Latifi accomplishes nothing else in F1, the Canadian will have performed one of the most consequential cameo roles ever seen. For it was his crash that set in train a sequence of events destined to be forever seared on the memories of all who witnessed it.
At the end, it is Verstappen who reigns supreme, and there is almost nothing that Mercedes can do about it, short of marching on FIA headquarters at Place de la Concorde. It might not be the piece of history that Hamilton ultimately craved, the one record that could have banished any more comparisons with Michael Schumacher, but it is the finest possible result for F1. Rivals to Hamilton's dominance have come and gone in the past 14 years, with Fernando Alonso leaving as his team-mate in a fit of pique and Nico Rosberg retiring at 31. By contrast, Verstappen, just 24, is here to stay. Through remorseless commitment to his craft, he has dethroned the most decorated driver of this or any generation. His was a mammoth task, peerlessly executed.
Sir Jackie Stewart had it about right, claiming that it would be better for the sport all round if Verstappen prevailed. This was less a slight against Hamilton than an acknowledgment that dynasties exist to be toppled. Mercedes have established an unanswerable standard throughout the turbo-hybrid era, but Verstappen, driving perhaps a marginally inferior car on pure pace, has discovered a way to usurp them. That is a monumental accomplishment, and not one that should be disparaged by gripes about Masi's judgment or his deployment of a safety car.
As for Hamilton, the sense of lost opportunity that will assail him over the next few months can only be guessed at. He did not need championship No8 to prove himself, but it would have represented an exquisite bookend to his body of work. This will feel to him like 2008 in reverse: a race that he and his team believed for all the world was theirs, only for it all to fall apart at the death. In the space of five convulsive laps, he went from nursing his tyres to a comfortable win to seeing Verstappen's angry Red Bull swarming in his rear-view mirror. F1, in all probability, will never see a repeat of such scenes again. So please, let the inquests cease, and let Verstappen bask in the adulation that is his due.
