Max Verstappen says that he got lucky at the Yas Marina circuit and that helped him outrun Lewis Hamilton to claim the title.
A safety car triggered by Nicholas Latifi towards the end of the race regained hopes for Max Verstappen in the final race of the season. The Dutchman had led the drivers’ standings for the most part of the 2021 campaign.
Although he could have had more points if the unfortunate crashes did not happen, specifically in three cases. Due to a tyre blowout, he crashed in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. He later had a collision with his title rival Lewis Hamilton in Silverstone and the third one in Hungary when he hit the wall at the first corner.
Verstappen believes that all the good luck came back to him in Abu Dhabi following Nicholas Latifi’s crash and the safety car. This bought him some time to get a fresh tyre for one final lap of the race.
He said, “it’s always difficult to really use the right word for it but you need a bit of luck in your life, and I think up until that point I didn’t really have a lot of luck in the season – otherwise I think the championship would have been decided way earlier,” said Verstappen.
“Luck came at the right time for me and then of course you still have to take the opportunity, which we did as a team.”
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Max Verstappen knew his title chances were over
The 24-year-old knew that his chances to win the title were over until the safety car joined the track. Although he would not have given until the chequered flag.
“It looked very tough out there,” he added. “Of course, I could see they (Mercedes) were quicker. I think we tried everything as a team. Then I said to myself I’ll just do everything I can here, drive to the limit, give it all, not make it look easy for them.
“We took the tyres. Maybe in hindsight, you could say if they had taken the tyres I would have stayed out and then you have the scenario the other way around.”
The Dutchman also praised his team for providing him with a car to go in a battle with Mercedes. He said, “the team always had to try to be perfect.”
“That brings a lot of pressure and stress for everyone and I think that’s quite extraordinary. I had seasons before when I was on the podium but I wasn’t really tired because there was nothing to push for.
“They (Mercedes) were too far away from me and I was quite comfortably third or whatever. So to have a season like this was pretty intense.”
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