Lewis Hamilton fought for his first World Championship with Mercedes in 2014, a year after he joined the team. He succeeded in that quest, winning his first title since 2008 but there was one thing about that year, which didn’t please him at all. It was the despised ‘double points’ rule, which was introduced for just one race — the Abu Dhabi GP season finale.
Hamilton, labeling this as stupid, said, “Just left a bad taste in my mouth because I’m going into the weekend. I’ve done a great job during the year, there have been some challenges, but this weekend, just one race can flip the whole championship.”
“Firstly, the rule change (double points in AD14) was stupid.”
“Just left a bad taste in my mouth because I’m going into the weekend. I’ve done a great job during the year, there have been some challenges, but this weekend, just one race can flip the whole championship.”
— sim (@sim3744) November 23, 2024
Thankfully for Hamilton, nothing drastic happened. This strange addition was down to F1 wanting to add more drama and excitement to the title fight, which otherwise could have been a cakewalk for Hamilton, who was leading teammate Nico Rosberg by 17 points.
So, had Rosberg won that race, he would’ve earned 50 instead of 25 points, which meant that Hamilton finishing anywhere below P2 would have spelled disaster. Fortunately, Hamilton won the race and Rosberg was nowhere near him—a lap down and out of the points—in the end.
This unusual rule came into light very recently. But even back then, there was outrage. In the aftermath of the season finale, majority of the drivers and team bosses resonated with Hamilton’s opinion, and after a lengthy discussion, it was decided that the rule would be scrapped from F1 forever.
Even Rosberg, who could have benefitted from it, stated that it had to go away. It was only in place to manufacture a title fight, but could have been detrimental to a driver who had won the maximum points conventionally for the majority of the season.
