F1 News: Mercedes could not let Abu Dhabi 2021 go

Mercedes made a bad judgement call during the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP that cost Lewis Hamilton the race and his 8th driving title, and Adrian Newey says they could not let it go.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Adrian Newey believes the events of Abu Dhabi 2021 had a psychological effect on Mercedes, as they couldn’t accept what had happened.

Max Verstappen controversially won the 2021 drivers’ championship at Lewis Hamilton’s expense, benefitting from a poor decision by the Mercedes team to not pit Hamilton for fresh tires.

Video: The greatest finish in F1 history

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Newey reflected on Abu Dhabi 2021 and suggested Mercedes’ attitude afterwards wasn’t the right one.

“No. No it didn’t [affect me]. I think it got to Mercedes,” he explained. “Instead of saying ‘OK, we will accept it and move on’ it started to affect their psyche which is an interesting one.

“That’s from the outside. I could be completely wrong. They couldn’t let it go psychologically. If you have a bad race, perhaps you should have won and the bloody thing broke down on the last lap or whatever. I always had a personal issue. I will be horrible to be around any airport on that Sunday evening but come Monday morning I need to wake up and be back on it.

“I can’t go into the factory all miserable and downbeat. Part of my position I suppose is to help and hopefully motivate everybody not saying it’s ‘so unfair, we were robbed’. It doesn’t help, does it?”

Newey dismissed suggestions the talk around Abu Dhabi 2021 impacted Verstappen.

He added: “Max is so self-assured. This is in a positive way, not a negative way. There’s arrogance and there’s self-assured. He’s not arrogant but he’s self assured, self confident.

“He’s a deep-thinker but he doesn’t let things like that… I don’t think they really get to him. He’s able to shut that off and get on with that job, doing what he loves doing which is driving racing cars.”