Lewis Hamilton was on the verge of becoming the most accomplished Formula One driver of all-time when he led in the final lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the end of the 2021 season.
The Brit was ahead of his rival Max Verstappen and only needed to close out the victory to leapfrog the Dutchman to secure the Drivers’ Championship for the fifth-straight campaign and to break his tie with Michael Schumacher for most titles.
The 24-year-old had the tyre advantage and capitalized on the situation to surge past Hamilton to secure his maiden Drivers’ Championship crown. Hamilton is backed to bounce back from his disappointment as the leading contender in the Paddy Power online betting odds at 4/5 to regain his title in 2022.
It will be a test of his composure along with that of his team after the frustration of the last campaign. Mercedes were furious with the outcome and launched an appeal. After those were unsuccessful there were musings of potential court action, but eventually the German outfit begrudgingly accepted the result. Verstappen’s triumph was the first time since 2013 that Red Bull produced a driver to win the Drivers’ Championship.
Mercedes had dominated both the Drivers and Constructors’ Championship for seven years before Red Bull were able to break their stranglehold of the sport. Verstappen and his team should expect a response from the German outfit in 2022, and work is already underway to fine tune their W13 model for action.
Another hugely dramatic moment in the Verstappen/Hamilton title battle 💥😮#ItalianGP 🇮🇹 #F1 pic.twitter.com/P4J4bN6wX2
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 12, 2021
Hamilton himself has refused to confirm whether he will return to the grid in 2022. The 36-year-old was gracious in defeat, although no doubt privately he will have been extremely annoyed with the outcome. Hamilton and Verstappen made no secret about the intensity of their rivalry over the course of the 2021 season, which included a serious collision at Monza that sent both drivers crashing out of the Italian Grand Prix.
Given the nature of his defeat, it will be no surprise to see the Brit return to action fuelled by the disappointment of losing his title and the prospect of passing Schumacher once and for all at the top of the sport.
After his last Drivers’ Championship defeat in 2016, the Brit reeled off an emphatic performance in the 2017 season to beat out Sebastian Vettel for the crown by 46 points even with a stuttering end to the term. Hamilton ended the debate regarding the best driver of the modern era in his duels with Vettel, comfortably dispatching the German and Ferrari into obscurity.
Verstappen leads the next generation of drivers and will have ambitions of matching and perhaps even surpassing Hamilton’s achievements in the sport. Therefore, there is still work to do for the 36-year-old, even with seven Drivers’ Championships to his name, to ensure that he does down in history as the greatest of all-time. We should expect to see a motivated and clinical Hamilton in 2022.
