The 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will forever be remembered for how the title was decided and the fact that Lewis Hamilton lost out on a record-breaking eighth World Championship.
But what if he should have already been a 10-time champion by the time of that night at Yas Marina?
That's right, forget Abu Dhabi. Through mechanical gremlins and a forgotten accident, Hamilton has lost out on three World Championships that would have rendered Abu Dhabi moot.
You could also maybe add 2012 to the list below as McLaren had the fastest car, but repeated operational and reliability failures cost Hamilton a shot at challenging Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso in his final year before moving to Mercedes for 2013.
2007
Hamilton set out his stall quite early in his F1 career, by dancing the McLaren around the outside of Alonso at Turn 1 in his first race in Australia. Nothing quite like telling the World Champion what you think of the #1 sticker on his car.
Tensions bubbled away between the two all season, with the infamous Hungarian GP qualifying a flashpoint that had been brewing since Monaco when Hamilton was effectively told to hold position behind Alonso - multi-12, if you like.
Come the penultimate race of the year - McLaren had been fined $100 million for Spygate and chucked out the Constructors', but with a three-way title battle brewing, good cop Bernie Ecclestone managed to convince bad cop Max Mosley not to boot Hamilton or Alonso out of the Drivers'.
Heading to China, Hamilton had 107 points, Alonso 95 and Kimi Raikkonen 90. These were the days of 10 points for a win, so Raikkonen had a 17 point gap to make up with just 20 left on the board.
All Hamilton had to do was finish within one point of Alonso and six of Raikkonen to win the title.
But McLaren, engaging in open warfare against Alonso - their own driver - kept Hamilton out on worn intermediates so much so that he skated into a gravel trap when finally pitting as Raikkonen won.
That meant the standings were Hamilton 107, Alonso 103 and Raikkonen 100 heading to Brazil.
Hamilton was forced wide at Turn 4 on the opening lap, before gearbox gremlins dropped him well down the field and forced him into a recovery drive, but tyre degradation was high.
He needed fifth to win the title if Raikkonen won, but could only manage a lapped seventh as Raikkonen fortuitously jumped team-mate Felipe Massa in the final pit-stops...
Raikkonen emerged victor by a point, with Hamilton since hinting that he now knows what exactly went on behind-the-scenes, politically, but that he cannot talk about it as his hopes of being a rookie World Champion imploded.
2010
This is something of a forgotten lost championship for Hamilton - but stems from his DNF with two laps to go in the Spanish Grand Prix.
Running second behind Mark Webber, Hamilton suffered a tyre rim failure that pitched him into the Turn 3 barrier, costing him 18 points, and handing three more each to Vettel and Alonso.
Come the final standings after the four-way shootout in Abu Dhabi, as the tables below show, Hamilton finished on 240 points, 16 behind champion Vettel.
If those lost 18 points are added, and Vettel loses the three bonus he got in Barcelona, Hamilton wins the title by five points.
Had 2007 also gone his way, victory in 2010 would have been his third title from four years in F1.
Actual 2010 F1 standings
Driver | Position | Points |
---|---|---|
Sebastian Vettel | 1st | 256 |
Fernando Alonso | 2nd | 252 |
Mark Webber | 3rd | 242 |
Lewis Hamilton | 4th | 240 |
If Hamilton finishes second at the Spanish GP
Driver | Position | Points | Points change |
---|---|---|---|
Lewis Hamilton | 1st | 258 | +18 |
Sebastian Vettel | 2nd | 253 | -3 |
Fernando Alonso | 3rd | 249 | -3 |
Mark Webber | 4th | 242 | 0 |
2016
Most of the talk about losing the 2016 title came from the engine failure Hamilton suffered while leading in Malaysia - one of a spate he suffered that year.
But, that is not what cost him. Fluffing his starts on multiple occasions from pole position did.
In Australia, Bahrain, Spain and Italy, he started on pole, and failed to win any of them - famously crashing out in Spain with team-mate Nico Rosberg.
In Melbourne and at Monza, Hamilton finished second to Rosberg, with a swing of 14 points apiece while he could only manage third in Bahrain, a 20-point swing to Rosberg.
The then-annual funk weekend in Azerbaijan also cost him a 30-point swing as Rosberg won while engine setting troubles meant Hamilton could only manage fifth.
In the end, Rosberg would win the title by just five points - and then promptly did the biggest mic drop of all-time by walking away and retiring, ensuring Hamilton could never take the title back off him.
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WalterSobchak
Coulda shoulda woulda. If Schumacher's Ferrari didn't blow up in Suzuka 2006, he won't have been an eight-time WDC before Hamilton even showed up. If Prost didn't crash into Senna Suzuka 1989, Senna would have been a four-time WDC before Prost, Schumacher, Vettel, or Hamilton. But let's face it. The only real time Hamilton won WDCs was when he was in very dominant cars. He hasn't been in one for two years now, and it's been exactly two years since he last won a race. Just by simple comparison: Max won 10+ races when Mercedes was dominant. And 2021 Abu Dhabi: that really didn't have to go to the wire, if Hamilton (Silverstone) and Bottas (Hungary) didn't crash Verstappen out of the race. That 2021 eight WDC for Lewis is a delusion.
andrew-mair#64120
Great article. If you what-if Ayrton Senna not dying then I reckon he would have taken another 3 titles at Williams plus Ferrari wanted him rather than Michael so he could have gone on to take at least the same 5 titles at Ferrari. That would have been 11 titles…
Meint Veldman
I would argue , chances are Ferrari would not have had this successful period without Schumacher... But regardless I agree, this article is 'belogna'...
ruari2142 plays games
Karma works in mysterious ways. 7 is where he stops and for good reason. 2021 was full of underhand tactics. Rear DRS wing too wide, ramming opponent off track etc. 10 is a stretch, even with the clearly dominant car
cristian-bumbac#26196
"If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike"
Robson Coimbra
The "if" DOES NOT EXIST!!
Bohunkgearhead
We can speculate either way! Massa has shown us how he could be the WDC for 2008. Then Hamilton has no titles and Mercedes has less reason to sign him to a contract for 2013. In fact, Mercedes could have gone after Alonso for 2010. If they treat him right, he stays through to the 2014 turbo hybrid regs. Now he has a car and team that can give him titles, so he gets #3 that year then why would he ever leave F1 and Mercedes? How many titles would he have today?? In fact, Alonso should have won the 2007 title if McLaren had any sense. Then he would have come to Mercedes with 3 titles already in his CV. All of what I just wrote is nonsense, since none of it happened. Just idle speculation, but so is this article. I am a fan of the cars, not the drivers so much. I like the engineering way more than any of the personality nonsense about drivers.
tyler-j#15612
Michael Schumacher "should" have won 12
lee-taylor#14083
The three you list (with the exception of the first one) are not "missing" he lost those fair and square and these are non issues to me. Regarding the first year...yes there was a lot of "politics" going on and this is to the detriment to the sport....but the reigns were in his hands as it was him who drove it into the gravel....the most recent one is an absolute cheat fest....from the red bull overspend we found out about later to verstappen crashing into Hamilton when he couldn't overtake then "missing" his penalty by taking a new engine....and the last lap fiasco which has turned so many people off of the sport as it was such a blatant error/cheating
rogerhenson1
One of lifes great questions is how high can you pile it? I see they are raising the bar.
jurgen-hellberg#30131
Should have, or could have? I'm tempted to recall Rudyard Kipling's, If.