Former F1 boss reveals trick Mercedes could have used to guarantee Lewis Hamilton's F1 title

Former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has claimed that Mercedes missed out on a “pretty clever” trick to ensure Lewis Hamilton’s eighth F1 world title in the season finale in Abu Dhabi.

Ecclestone feels Mercedes missed the opportunity to use their second car, driven by Bottas, to ensure the race ended under safety car circumstances. In an interview with Blick, Ecclestone said:

“(It’s) pretty clever. It would have been ideal to make sure the Safety Car stayed out and the race wouldn’t have been restarted.”

“Many people would have been upset, but there wouldn’t have been any changes to the final result.”

On lap 53 of 58 of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Nicholas Latifi’s crash brought out the safety car. Mercedes chose not to pit Lewis Hamilton from the lead of the race to protect track position. The team believed that the race might end under the safety car period.

Meanwhile, Red Bull pitted Verstappen in P2 for fresh soft tires in anticipation of a restart. The team also retired Sergio Perez subsequently after his car developed glitches. Red Bull wanted to avoid Perez stopping on the track and further lengthening the safety car period.

By the time the debris from the incident had been cleared up, there was only one lap remaining. Race control controverisally chose to allow only select lapped cars to unlap themselves. They reasoned that it was to ensure that the final race of the season doesn’t end under the safety car, while also preventing lapped cars from interfering with the leaders.

This meant that Max Verstappen was right on Lewis Hamilton’s tail before the restart. The former subsequently overtook the latter, both for the race win and the championship.

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When Lewis Hamilton tried to hold up Nico Rosberg to win the championship

The 2016 F1 world championship went down to the wire, much in the same way as the 2021 season. Heading into the final race of the season at Abu Dhabi, Lewis Hamilton trailed team-mate and title rival Nico Rosberg by 12 points.

Winning the race and hoping that Rosberg finished fourth or lower in the race was what Hamilton could do. However, the Briton wasn’t satisfied with just cruising to victory, while hoping for some bad luck to his rival. Instead, he took the matters into his own hands.

Starting on pole position, Lewis Hamilton built up a solid lead of himself, while Nico Rosberg comfortably maintained the second position. However, on the closing laps of the race, Hamilton restively reduced his pace to a crawl to assist Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen in third and fourth places, hoping that either (or both) would overtake Rosberg.

Despite multiple calls from his team, Hamilton didn’t relent and (in)famously told his team that he was in no mood to play the team game as he was already losing the championship.

Meanwhile, Rosberg successfully held off the charging Vettel to seal his maiden F1 world championship.

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