"A fair final lap" - Gary Lineker fires shots at F1 during BBC award ceremony

Gary Lineker has taken a subtle dig at F1 during the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards, calling the controversial last-lap shootout between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi anything but “a fair final lap”.

The former professional footballer, often regarded as one of the greatest strikers in English football history, was co-hosting the award ceremony when he said:

“That was the most incredible end to a season that had absolutely everything. Apart, possibly from a fair final lap. He (Lewis Hamilton) is a class act and now a knight of the realm; arise, Sir Lewis, you deserve all the accolades, because you are one of the greatest sports stars Britain has ever produced.”

The F1 season finale at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last week witnessed Verstappen overtaking Hamilton on the last lap of the Grand Prix to clinch his maiden F1 world title. This meant Hamilton missed out on securing a record-breaking eighth world title despite being quicker than Verstappen and leading for the majority of the race.

A late safety car intervention brought on by Williams driver Nicholas Latifi’s crash on lap 54, combined with the controversial handling of the safety car restart by race control, handed Verstappen and Red Bull a significant advantage over Hamilton and Mercedes.

Meanwhile, Hamilton wasn’t nominated for BBC Sports Personality of the Year for the first time since 2016, when he last lost his title bid (to his then Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg).

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2022 F1 cars are similar to current generation F2 cars: Mattia Binotto

Ferrari F1 team principal Mattia Binotto has claimed that the 2022 generation F1 cars are aerodynamically similar to current generation F2 cars, and therefore the drivers who excelled in F2 might hold an advantage next year.

In an interview with the Italian sports portal Formula Passion, Binotto said:

“2022 marks a discontinuity and it will also be for those who drive the car. They will have to adapt, and it is not certain that everyone will do it in the same way. We will have to relearn some driving styles. They are cars more similar to F2. Those who were strong there will perhaps also be strong with these cars, but we will not be able to express a definitive judgment even in the first 2-3 Grands Prix. Being different, each driver will have to understand and adapt, as well as teams, setups, developments. It will take a few races to get a definitive and complete picture."

The upcoming F1 season will feature cars that are radically different from current generation machines. The new technical regulations governing the cars are specifically tailored to create more “raceable” cars that can follow each other closely in high-speed corners.

This means that the 2022 cars will gain the majority of their downforce through the “ground effect” and will feature “clean” over-body surfaces.

Initially, the new cars were expected to be some 6-7 seconds slower than the outgoing cars. According to Pirelli, however, tire tests in Abu Dhabi indicate that at the start of the year, the cars will be less than half a second slower than 2021 cars, and quicker by the end of the year.