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Winning an F1 title is no easy feat, as one needs to be a ridiculously fast driver and need to drive the right car.
One also needs to have the right team and of course some luck. Even then, things may not always fall into place, but when they do, it feels great and feels deserved.
However, in F1 history, there have been occasions when despite surmounting all the hurdles, the legitimacy of title wins gets questioned.
Sometimes after jumping all the hoops, the driver does not get the accolades that he deserves but rather gets an asterisk put over his title triumph. On that note, here's a look at three such instances when an F1 title's legitimacy was questioned:
#1 2021 F1 Championship (Max Verstappen)
The 2021 championship will go down in history as one of the most intense battles for the title.
Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton went up against each other in similarly paced cars and reached the last race of the season level on points.
It's well known now what happened. Questionable handling of the safety car restart by Michael Masi left Lewis Hamilton vulnerable against Max Verstappen in the last lap of the season.
Verstappen won the title, but the triumph was greeted by an uproar on social media. There were demands over actions against the race director and reversing what happened before the safety car.
As a result, Michael Masi, the race director was removed from his position, but Verstappen continued to be the titleholder.
#2 1994 F1 Championship (Michael Schumacher)
The uproar towards Michael Schumacher's 1994 title win did not take place that year.
Towards the end of the 1994 season, Schumacher led the championship by one point from Damon Hill going into the last race of the season. He collided with the Williams driver in what appeared at the time to be rather an unfortunate set of circumstances.
However, in 1997, Schumacher, now driving a Ferrari, led the championship by one point yet again, this time from Jacques Villeneuve.
He collided with the Williams driver in a move that appeared to be a blatant attempt to cause a race-ending collision. The move backfired, as Schumacher retired from the race, while Villeneuve continued to win the title.
However, what that did was bring into question what happened in 1994, when Schumacher did something similar but was able to win the championship without any repercussions.
#3 2008 F1 Championship (Lewis Hamilton)
One of the less talked about controversies was the 2008 Drivers' championship win by Lewis Hamilton.
To understand the same, one needs to understand the backdrop of the 2008 season. The season was preceded by one of the biggest scandals in F1 history, the 'Spygate', where information from Ferrari had been passed on by Nigel Stepney, a former Ferrari employee, to Mike Coughlan, a former McLaren team member.
McLaren were disqualified from the championship in 2007 and were slapped a $100 million fine, but both their drivers were allowed to compete in the drivers' championship.
The bigger issue was, however, what happened next season, as McLaren were able to take part in 2008. Despite all the checks by FIA, the team had an undue advantage of having Ferrari's data exposed to them the previous season.
Hence, when Lewis Hamilton won the title in 2008 against Felipe Massa, he did that in a car that was essentially built from Ferrari's data in 2007.
