Quote:
Originally Posted by MontyB1
Red Bull is loosing its coolness factor and the next time they start to throw toys and threaten leaving the sport or engine freezes, I can guarantee that the rest of the paddock is going to point and laugh at them next time. All is very much not rosy for the team despite the on track performance.
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Have you noticed that F1 is/was cool fun for Mercedes and a lot of hardcore Hamilton fans and most British press as long as Hamilton kept winning ? Once a raw talent like Verstappen was facilitated to shine his true colors with a competitive F1 car and to become a real threat to 'dethrone' Hamilton, the atmosphere turned outright toxic.
Verstappen/Red Bull ended the Hamilton/Mercedes snoozefest years of winning F1 races and F1 titles. And still today, some are in disbelief to fathom how this terminus was even possible. The party was not supposed to end,
ergo some resort to the abject attitude of an inciting narrative of personal attacks to compromise/discredit the achievements of the main rival and/or to cover up own shortcomings (such as bad race strategy decisions). That 'bad loser' attitude is unsportsmanslike and disrespectful.
The 2022 season confirms that neither Mercedes nor Hamilton can stop Verstappen in his tracks, no matter what they try on track. Verstappen did not by chance lead more laps throughout the 2021 season than all other drivers of the field together.
Imagine for a moment that during the post-race interview after the penultimate 2021 F1 race (Saudi Arabia) a journalist would have told Hamilton the prophecy that ever since that Jeddah race-win, he wouldn't win any of the next 23 F1 race events (21 races + 2 'Sprint' events), unlike Verstappen who was going to win 17 of those events (15 races + 2 'Sprint' events): who would have believed that ? But it is the truth. And hence the question: can you handle it ?