The more I think about this the more I come around to the idea that actually, Hamilton wasn't 'robbed', or at least he wasn't robbed by Masi. The safety car is always a 'random' event that can change everything, it really hinges on whether Merc didn't pit Hamilton because they believed the race would end under the safety car. If they thought that, then the decision to stay out was obviously right, but on the radio Bono said to Lewis '....the race MAY not restart'.
Also, if we imagine the safety car coming out three laps earlier, which meant that race definitely would restart, I'm not 100% sure but I'm guessing they still wouldn't have been able to pit and keep the lead, so they probably would still have wanted to keep track position, and if they had pitted then presumably Max would have stayed out since that meant Hamilton would have had to pass Max to win and Hamilton couldn't afford a crash....
So, yeah, the safety car definitely screwed Hamilton over. But the safety car is a random event at every grand prix. Masi didn't follow the rules and that should have played into Merc's hands... but it would have screwed Max over. If all the lapped cars had been let go and the race had finished under the safety car I don't believe the Hamilton fans would have accepted that Max had been screwed over even though he was sitting behind Hamilton with new softs on the car.
Apparently the team bosses voted Max over Hamilton this year, was not expecting that.
Interestingly though, Hamilton is only 5 secs faster than Bottas, check out Max vs Perez. 13 seconds!
Take a look: this is the sum of all 2021 qualifying times of every driver. The gap between Hamilton and Verstappen is 1.387 seconds.
Perez is opposite to Bottas: bad at qualifying fly laps, and good at race pace.
Max is in a different league given his Red Bull Honda setup. He can match what the Mercs has been doing since last year 2020. That鈥檚 the reason why the trio of Hamilton, Verstappen, Bottas has the most podiums in all of F1鈥檚 history 馃槻
Clearly Max driving skills is more than the car. Although Lewis is truly great as a driver, it can be overshadowed by his ever dominant Merc engine & racecar 馃槜
So what you are saying is that if Hamilton drove the Red Bull he would be behind Perez in the championship?
