Poleman wrote: ↑13 Nov 2022, 23:06
I don't see the reason why people are surprised about Verstappen.As AMG.Tzan said,he only races Hamilton like that.His beef is with Hamilton and noone else,it has been proven time and time again.Screwing his own race,Hamilton's race and his teammate at the end in a race where points mattered ZERO for him.Noone can deny that he is a great driver but the whole notion that he has matured this year is based largely that he had a car buffer to lean on and he took advantage of it perfectly.If Mercedes was up there since the begining and Hamilton was his competitor,i would bet money that we would have a repeat of 2021.Congrats to Russell for his maiden win,even if people said that he was kind of lucky of the contact between VER and HAM he really drove a solid race ,well deserved.
That is a great narrative for the tabloids. But to be fair. Hamilton also had his fair share of contacts this year. Ask for instance alonso (Spa,Miami) or magnussen (Canada, Spain).
Interestingly the crash between Verstappen and Ocon in 2018 is a carbon copy of this one except that Verstappen was driving in Hamiltons position. Apparently he would have done exactly the same as Hamilton so he should have seen it coming.
The problem is that neither Hamilton or Verstappen back off when they see a line which they feel entitled to take. When you have a driver like Leclerc around them, they make space even though they perhaps shouldn’t. But when you have the two together contact is more or less a given.