Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton's Showdown Is Here
Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton's Showdown Is Here
Max Verstappen came into 2021 with a very clear goal: Turn potential and promise into performance by winning his first career Formula 1 World Driver's Championship. Back in February, I wrote that it may be too ambitious a goal for a season with carryover cars. No matter what comes next, I was wrong. Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton's Showdown Is Here
Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton enter Sunday's season finale at Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi tied on championship points, but Verstappen holds a tiebreaker in total wins that means he would win the title if neither scored a point or if both were somehow scored the same number of points. It puts Verstappen in a great position to win a championship. After all, he's won nine times this year already, what's a tenth? Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton's Showdown Is Here
But that tenth win will have to come against Lewis Hamilton at his absolute peak as an individual driver. The Mercedes W12 may not be the unbeatable beast it was as the W11 in 2020, but it appears to have finally come into its own since the team gave Hamilton one final new engine for the season ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix. Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton's Showdown Is Here
Hamilton outdueled an aggressive (and, frankly, dangerous) Verstappen with the new motor at both Interlagos and the new Corniche circuit in Saudi Arabia. In the race in between, he jetted out to a 23-second lead on the Losail Circuit that heavily favored the Mercedes downforce concept and won with relative ease. Hamilton comes to Yas Marina on a streak of three wins in a row, has his relatively fresh engine installed yet again, and was the only driver to cut into the 1:23 range in today's practice session at the newly-reconfigured track.
Where Verstappen has a season of accomplishment as a young driver that took the leap from good to great the same time his team returned to its early 2010s championship form, Hamilton has the momentum of recent success and the seven past championships to prove he knows how to execute in those winning moments.
So Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton's Showdown Is Here
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