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Whether you like them or hate them, you just can't ignore Lewis Hamilton fans! The sheer volume of their presence on social media is just mesmerizing to watch because it shows how healthy the sport is. There are a couple of trends that almost every F1 fan tends to come across since that fateful season in 2021.
Those trends are #AD2021 and #HumanErrorChampion. Ever since that fateful day when Michael Masi 'went racing' against the wishes of Toto Wolff, #AD2021 and #HumanErrorChampion have been a prominent presence on all social media.
Around 20 months have passed since that fateful day in Abu Dhabi where Max Verstappen became world champion for the first time and even now, here and there the trends continue to make an appearance during race weekends.
There is a perception that gets floated around often which claims that the race result in the 2021 F1 Abu Dhabi and the 'human error' (a term coined for Michael Masi's decision by the FIA) cost Lewis Hamilton the title against Max Verstappen that season. What if I told you that it was not just that particular 'human error' but the one made earlier in the season by the Mercedes driver that cost him the title?
Let's take a look!
Lewis Hamilton's 'human error' that cost him the title
For this, we need to cast our mind back to the 2021 F1 Hungarian GP. The first lap of the race saw Lewis Hamilton's teammate Valtteri Bottas miss his braking point in damp conditions and clatter into a slew of cars. One of the cars that Bottas severely damaged was the Red Bull of Max Verstappen.
The incident at turn 1 meant that the race had to be Red flagged. At the time of the stoppage. Lewis Hamilton was leading the race while Max Verstappen was trundling towards the pits with a car that was severely damaged. This was the perfect setting for Hamilton to win the race, secure the bonus point for the fastest lap and make the most of his adversary's problems.
That was the plan when the Red Flag restart procedure began. With no rainfall during the red flag period, it was assumed that the track might only need a few laps to become suitable for slicks. When Lewis Hamilton led the field out on the formation lap, the track was bone dry, there was no spray even from the intermediate tires and a switch to slicks appeared to make sense.
There was an expectation that quite a few cars would gamble on slicks straightaway and start their race in the pitlane. For Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes, this was a major dilemma.
Being the reigning world champions, the German unit had the very first garage in the pitlane. It was almost a certainty that Lewis will lose multiple positions if he pits alongside a slew of cars (Mercedes will have to wait for cars to pass before Lewis is sent out).
While no radio communication is allowed between the driver and the team during the formation lap, a pre-discussion would have surely been there. In all likelihood, the decision to pit straightaway or do a lap on Inters would have been in the hands of the driver as he makes his way through the track on the formation lap.
At the end of the formation lap, while Lewis Hamilton ignored the pit entry and went ahead to take the start, every other driver on the grid pitted for slicks. While we did end up having an iconic moment of only one car on the starting grid, the Mercedes driver knew this was a big mistake.
The mistake meant Hamilton pitted on the very next lap to come out 18 seconds behind race leader Esteban Ocon. He would march his way through the field to finish P3 (bumped up to P2 because of Sebastian Vettel's penalty). From a race weekend where he could have scored 26 points, he went away with only 18 points.
The repercussions of the mistake and the severity of it
It's not hard to justify Lewis Hamilton if one wants to. There is an argument to be made that the team and driver wanted to play it safe and did not want to lose places by pitting as a part of the crowd. The argument does however fall flat when you see the entire grid enter the pits.
The track was so dry that not even a single driver thought it made sense to start the race on inters. On a grid that varied from grizzly veterans such as Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso to rookies like Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin, not one driver opted to start the race on Inters. The only driver that did was Lewis Hamilton and in the end, it cost him a win that should have been a walk in the park.
Hamilton left eight points on the table in the 2021 F1 Hungarian GP and they would come back to haunt him in the last race of the season.
How Lewis Hamilton's 'human error' cost him the title
The Mercedes-Lewis Hamilton duo was stunning in the later phase of the 2021 F1 championship. Once the team flicked a switch in Brazil, the Red Bull-Max Verstappen duo could not keep up. Because of the brilliant late-season run, Hamilton and Verstappen went to the last race of the season level on points.
All Lewis Hamilton needed to do was finish ahead of Max Verstappen and the title was his. It was this battle of keeping the track position during the late race safety car that cost the Mercedes driver in the end. The German team did not pit because it wanted to secure the track position and felt that the race will not be restarted. Red Bull did the opposite and had Verstappen on fresh tires should the race restart.
In the end, Michael Masi restarted the race with one lap left and Lewis was a sitting duck at the time. Max Verstappen overtook Lewis Hamilton and the rest as they say is history.
If at this point in time, Lewis had those 8 extra points in the bag from Hungary, the 2021 F1 Abu Dhabi GP would have been approached in a completely different manner. All he needed to do in the last race of the season was secure P2 in the race and make sure Max Verstappen does not get the fastest lap.
Would Mercedes have pitted Lewis if he had those extra eight points? Yes, it would have because that would have still meant that the championship was in his hands. What happened in the 2021 F1 Abu Dhabi GP to end the season was not ideal but somewhere down the line if Lewis Hamilton did lose the championship because of a 'human error', it was the one that he made in the 2021 F1 Hungarian GP.
Being the only driver to not identify that the track is bone-dry was a major mistake and in the end, it was this 'human error' that cost Lewis Hamilton the title, not just what Michael Masi did.
