-
Lewis Hamilton responds to claim he could win F1 title due to Red Bull cost cap scandal.
Sir Lewis Hamilton has reacted to the claims that he could win the F1 title due to the Red Bull cost cap scandal and insists he doesn’t want Max Verstappen to lose the 2021 F1 title over the Red Bull cost cap scandal.
Even though Red Bull went over the financial cap, Sir Lewis Hamilton has stated that he does not want to be given the 2021 Formula One championship retroactively.
The British sporting hero controversially lost last year’s championship to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen on the last lap of the last race of the season.
Hamilton was on track to win in Abu Dhabi and win a record-breaking ninth championship, but Michael Masi, the race director at the time, applied the safety car rules erroneously and gave Verstappen the victory.
All parties involved had recovered from that incident, but the current revelation that Red Bull may have acquired a competitive edge over their rivals by breaking the budget cap for 2021 in a “small” way has further thrown into doubt the validity of the result from the previous year.
RELATED:
- Patrice Evra says Casemiro is now the ‘main man’ at Man United, begs’ fans to support Harry Maguire
- Lewis Hamilton reveals he is in talks with Mercedes over F1 contract extension
- UEL: Mikel Arteta reacts to Arsenal’s poor performance against PSV.
Red Bull maintains its innocence and says it will contest the FIA’s conclusions, while other teams and drivers have asked for harsher sanctions against them. McLaren CEO Zak Brown allegedly said Red Bull’s actions amounted to cheating.
The FIA are yet to decide what punishment to hand out, with one option being to deduct points from Verstappen and/or Red Bull, and as Hamilton only finished eight points behind his rival there is a slight chance that he could win the 2021 title – a year late.
The 37-year-old, however, claims that he has made an effort to move past the events in Abu Dhabi, which caused him to doubt his passion for the game.
Asked if he would welcome such an outcome, Hamilton told Motorsport.com: ‘No, because the damage is done.
‘I have my feeling within of what we did as a team, how we achieved it and what we really truly achieved, and I can keep that to myself within me. We gave it our all and we did it the right way, and I am proud of that.
‘Definitely when I heard about this cost [cap] thing that, for sure, brings up a little bit of emotion. Because you kind of buried it and moved on and then it comes back up, and then it’s like another bit of a kick. And, yeah, that just bought it all kind of fresh again. So then just getting back into the phase of just suppressing it and moving forwards.
‘I’ve moved on from it. I refuse to live in the past. I have already experienced that in 2007 [when he lost the title to Kimi Raikkonen by just one point] and, as a youngster, that definitely kept me up at nights and it was just negative. When you hold on to some negativity, when you hold on to hate or whatever it is, it is just holding you back.’