Years of grudges, bitter memories, and disappointments. Toto Wolff says enough and definitively closes the painful past of 2021, when Lewis Hamilton saw the dream of the eighth title slip away in the crazy last lap of Abu Dhabi.
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The finish at Yas Marina remains one of the most controversial events in Formula 1 history, which will never manage to satisfy everyone especially because a single episode was able to erase one of the most exciting seasons one can remember.
Wolff: “Max was a deserving world champion”
Guest on the SAP Podcast program, Toto Wolff was assigned four different numbers, corresponding to different moments of his career. One of these numbers was obviously 2021 and Wolff wanted to mention it immediately.
“The first thing that comes to mind? Abu Dhabi, not Mercedes’ eighth consecutive Constructors’ title. That remains a great achievement and a great moment, something never seen before. But the way that race unfolded, well… that will remain etched forever“, Wolff began.
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“I made peace with myself, and so did Lewis, and Verstappen was a deserving world champion, without a doubt. The season is not defined in a single afternoon or a single evening, but that is what remains impressed on me from 2021″.
The Mercedes team principal then broadened his view to the entire season, which did not start in the best way before the great chase on Verstappen: “It may seem like it was a great success, but actually it wasn’t because at the start of the year we struggled. Until June, until Silverstone. There we had a sort of second spring and, from that moment on, everything went quite well.
We were unstoppable. Then Lewis was unfairly disqualified in Brazil, was relegated to the back of the grid in the Sprint but recovered greatly. And from there he unleashed: it was the best Hamilton I saw in those years, but in the end [the eighth title] did not come”.
