This Lewis Hamilton-Max Verstappen crash still doesn’t feel right

Lewis hamilton won the British Grand Prix on Sunday, passing Charles Leclerc three laps from the checkered flag to take the lead and victory. But there was more than a hint of controversy about this one, after a Hamilton made contact with championship points leader Max Verstappen in the first round and sent him crashing out of the race.

You can watch the video of this incident here, if you haven’t seen it a million times already. Hamilton’s left front tire made contact with Verstappen’s right rear tire, sending Verstappen spinning through the wall of the tire on one of Silverstone’s fastest corners. Verstappen was sent to the hospital for a check-up but was determined to be fine.

In real time, Formula 1 commentators David Croft and Martin Brundle mainly determined that the incident was just that, a normal racing incident that perhaps could not have been avoided. The race marshals took a different point of view, handing Hamilton a 10-second penalty for causing the collision, which did not prevent him from winning the race.

The crash also had massive ramifications for the title, with Hamilton getting 25 points for the win and Verstappen getting zero for the DNF meaning Hamilton is only eight points behind Verstappen for the championship. Christian Horner, director of the Red Bull team, was predictably pissed off about it.

“I have reviewed the footage several times and still can’t help but feel that putting a wheel inside at Copse, one of the fastest corners in this world championship, was misjudged and represented a huge risk for Lewis for both pilots.

“He was not significantly alongside Max as you can see at the point of contact, Lewis’s left front to Max’s right back. The move never took place and had a 51G impact. for Max.

Horner too called it a “hollow victoryFor Hamilton, although Leclerc, a more neutral party, said this:

“Obviously there was space on the inside, maybe Lewis wasn’t completely at the top, but it’s also true that Max was pretty aggressive on the outside. So things happen, but I think that what is most important today is that Max is unharmed and that he is well.

Interestingly, Mercedes said on Monday that Hamilton would likely have given up whether there had been no red flag after the accident at Verstappen, due to damage to Hamilton’s left front wheel. Going through Formula1.com:

“We had failed on the rim where we had contact at the front left,” said Andrew Shovlin, trackside team technical director, “so it would have been a abandonment of the track if he didn’t. there had been no red flag.

“The rest of the damage was actually remarkably small,” he added. “It was a tire temperature sensor that had come loose, so it was swaying, but surprisingly, it’s the least important part of the front fender – and it’s the only one that broke. “

I can’t say if Mercedes is saying this to rub more salt into Red Bull’s injury or maybe they’re just trying to make the case that they didn’t come out unscathed either. And while F1 race director Michael Masi said monday that the outcome was not factored into when it came to deciding Hamilton’s penalty – Masi said it had been the guide for years – damage to Verstappen’s championship hopes by the incident appear huge, even if you believe the Dutchman was at least partly to blame.

We can also, at the end of the season, consider the accident to be an incident if Verstappen wins the championship. If Hamilton continues to win the championship, especially with 25 points or less, Red Bull will remember it as something more than a blip. Regardless of how things turned out, the season is now steeped in a little more drama, a little more tension.

Probably the fairest outcome would have been for DNF’s Hamilton, too, if that was, as Mercedes says, a possibility. At least in two weeks, in Hungary, everyone could have hit reset and started over.