It’s been two days now since I stayed up late to watch the final race of the F1 season in Abu Dhabi with my sons.
Full disclosure, we are all team Hamilton fans here, and were excited to watch the final deciding race as to who would take out the 2021 World Driver’s Championship.
But now, days later, I am struggling to articulate my feelings about the events of the final 5 laps of the race. I am not angry or upset per se, but rather I feel empty, dull, and numb. I am finding it hard to muster up indignation or anger or any other feeling, positive or negative.
I have been watching F1 since I attended my first track event at the Adelaide F1GP back in 1985, and while I took a break from watching the sport when I witnessed (on live TV) the great Ayrton Senna die on track in 1994, I did start re-watching it again from about 2010 onwards.
But now I fear that my passion for the sport is just… gone. Just like that, overnight, I feel like I can carry on with my life without keeping track of when the next race is, or what the teams are up to with respect to car development.
What happened on Sunday night was closer to a fake ‘made for the audience’ reality TV show rather than a sport of Titans.
I am speaking from some experinece here - My older son was involved in two reality TV shows over the past couple of years, and so we got to see how the sausage was made, so to speak, and let me tell you - it is not pretty. The level of manipulation, false depictions, perception bias and outright lying and broken promises is off the scale. Those reality TV shows you watch are never about true talent coming out on top. Most of the time, the decision has already been predetermined, and events are manipulated to suit the required outcomes, and to get a reaction out of the audience.
That is what happened in Abu Dhabi.
Let me make it clear that this wasn’t about Max Verstappen winning instead of Lewis. Personally I believe that Max is a great driver (despite his overly aggressive demeanour on track), and deserved to be challenging for the title that day. But to have won the championship this way will always leave a question mark over his legacy, and I believe that is unfair to Max too.
This whole season has been full of incredible wheel to wheel racing, and great team leapfrogging in terms of car development. The first part of Sunday’s race was equally fantastic, and I will even say that, as a dedicated LH44 fan, I was even whooping with delight for those couple of laps where Hamilton was battling Perez, and Checo was doing some astounding driving to hold Lewis off and letting Max catch up.
Yes, I was cheering for the opposing team because THAT is the epitome of what this sport is about - Drivers battling to within a millimetre of their (and their car’s) ability to get track position, but still keeping it clean and above board.
I am not even upset at Latifi crashing in the closing laps, which triggered the safety car coming out - heck, this is motor racing and that is expected.
But those contradicting and ever changing decisions by the race director in the final closing laps however, were mystifying and gut wrenching. I feel that Lewis was definitely robbed of his 8th, record beating title.
I spent Monday quietly and simply unfollowing the topics of F1 and Auto Racing on my social and Youtube feeds. I am not going to jump on any bandwagons on one side or the other and trying to force a change in decision or a reversing of the result.
I am simply walking away from the sport that I have loved for many decades, because I feel it is no longer a sport where the best driver/team can shine at their best.
I know the sport has seen a huge influx of ‘2 minute F1 fans’ recently because of the NetFlix series, but I am unsure if they will stick around for long when they see what a typical F1 season is like. This year, we were treated to an absolute spectacle for the whole season. I doubt that will be repeated again for a long time, unless of course, they make it happen by some judicious manipulation in 2022 because they have to keep the new fans entertained.
But I won’t be staying around to watch that ‘manufactured for TV fakery’ unfold, and I doubt that many ‘true’, long time fans of the sport will either.