On the short run to turn one the Mercedes’ rear wing was beyond the Red Bull’s front wing before they had even reached the braking zone for the first corner. When the five red lights extinguished, however, he almost instantly realised he had been bested. And as Verstappen lined up on the prime grid slot for the tenth and final time in his most successful ever season, waiting for the rest of the field to join him, he knew that of the hundreds of competitive standing starts he had experienced in his racing career, this was the most important of all. Verstappen made an audacious bid to re-pass HamiltonBut his practice starts had not gone well. With Verstappen on the less-durable compound compared to Hamilton, he was not only under pressure to hold onto the lead on the short sprint down to the first corner to maintain the crucial track position he needed to make the best of his strategy, he had the benefit of grippier tyres off the line to do so. Unlike most sporting pursuits, motorsport is unusual in how the start of a contest can often prove its most critical point. “So it was not a difficult decision to make to say ‘okay, we will focus on the softs.’”Īdvert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free “I felt good on the long run on the softs,” Verstappen said.
Unintentional or otherwise, Verstappen was now likely locked into an early first pit stop for the opening phase of the race, whereas Hamilton had more freedom to extend at his leisure. That raised rival Hamilton’s suspicions – was this a Red Bull ruse, intended to disguise their preference for the softer rubber? An uncharacteristic lock-up into turn one earlier in Q2 had flat-spotted his medium tyres. Verstappen had secured pole position, but at the cost of using the soft tyres in the second session of Saturday’s qualifying hour. A race – and title – almost lost at the startĪs the only two racers who had ever held any realistic chance of competing for the championship in 2021, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton had regularly represented two deeply contrasting philosophies on-track throughout the 6,103 kilometres of racing completed through the season before the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.Īhead of their ultimate encounter around the Yas Marina circuit, the final qualifying session of 2021 ensured that they would be taking a differing approach to the most important race of the season – and arguably, of both their careers. Hamilton’s superior start was a blow for VerstappenBut cast aside the controversy over race control and put appeals and protests out of mind, because what those thousands at the track and many millions watching witnessed, beyond a new world champion crowned, was a demonstration of phenomenal racing prowess from all of the key protagonists. Regretfully, to an unfortunate extent, not for the most deserving of reasons. The 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will always stand out in the annals of the sport’s history. It is in making millions of decisions throughout a two hour race – and have none of them be the wrong one. It is in applying an iron will to succeed, molded by unshakable self belief. It is their ability to keep composed under the most impossible of pressure. Through years of karting, honed by hundreds of races in junior formulae and complemented by hours in simulators either at the factory or at home, a champion is forged through their racecraft.
#Asphalt 9 next car hunt drivers#
What separates Formula 1 drivers from any other class of pilot is in their supremacy at racing.įor ‘drivers’ is a misnomer – what these athletes truly are, at their core, are ‘racers’. Not simply in their mastery of the inconceivable challenge of commanding these unfathomably rapid racing cars at speeds exceeding 330kph while hitting every braking point, every apex and powering out of every corner exit with laser-focused precision and metronomic consistency.
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