Hamilton’s ‘stolen’ F1 title still hurts Wolff: “Best man that day didn’t win"

Hamilton had dominated the season-ending 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and was on course to win a record-breaking eighth world title when an incorrectly-handled late Safety Car period changed the destiny of the championship. 

Decisions made by then FIA race director Michael Masi led to Verstappen controversially snatching the title off Hamilton on a final lap restart and would later cost the Australian his job after a report into the contentious finale concluded that “human error” was responsible. 

18 months on, Wolff admitted he is still hurt by the circumstances of the defeat. 

“Both drivers started with equal points into this race,” Wolff said in an appearance on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs. 

“Best man and best machine wins, and the best man that day didn’t win. And it’s still something that stings, not of losing it because I would have been able [and] all of us would have been able to lose that race fair and square and admit that. But it was stolen and that made it difficult.

“The FIA was with its next regime, a new president was voted in literally that month, and was able to admit that a mistake was made and it was “human error”, that’s how they called it. But obviously that was not bringing us the trophy back and was not making Lewis the only eight-time world champion.

“But you just need to overcome it. And I think Lewis and I are very similar in that respect, we are able to compartmentalise. But it is what it is. Much worse things happen in the world than being stolen of a Formula 1 world championship.” 

Wolff feels Mercedes won hearts and minds as a result, though he insists he “would have rather won the championship, but today we have more fans.”

“The interesting phenomenon is that we as a team and Lewis as a driver, we didn’t have a lot of credit and sympathy because we won so many times,” he explained. 

“And we became the underdog in that moment. People cheered for us. And that is still a positive for us today.”