2021 Race 1 Bahrain

[Nitrodaze]

"Chances were that he may have got five seconds for the off-track infringement and another five for ignoring the warning."

Nitro , the warning was that he would get a penalty , so it's not likely he would get a second penalty . That doesn't make sense at all .

If you think about it , Max had a point when he suggested staying in first place .
Staying there would mean they could argue the point , and even if Max couldn't get far enough away from Lewis to negate the 5 second penalty , the two of them were more than 5 seconds ahead of everyone else , so he wouldn't have dropped farther behind than second place , where he finished the race anyway .

But , the way it finished , with Max second , there's no way to regain the position , as you'd have to penalize Lewis , who hadn't done anything wrong in the incident , even if he had crossed the line multiple times before without any outside influence .

I even think it's arguable that because the Mercs were going wide there all race long , that the tires would have been less tortured than if they had stayed inside the line , thus making it more possible for Max to have repassed him in the end .

And , Shifter , I think you're right about Max being more mature , as he toed the team line right away and didn't seem to freak out as he might have done in the past .

I agree, they would have had the opportunity to argue the point. But they would be arguing the point with stewards whose warning has been ignored as well as a strongly complaining Mercedes. They would start the season with bad blood with the stewards. And the stewards have discretionary additional points that they are allowed to dish out where they find it would serve to discourage their warnings from being ignored. The Redbull pit wall made the right call under the circumstances. For Verstappen supporters, l can see why they would feel that he has been hard done by. But that is not the case.

This is one of those things that is fraught with controversy either way. If Verstappen had won the race by ignoring the Stewards, he would have gained an advantage by ignoring the stewards as he would not have won the race otherwise, as the final outcome shows. And Mercedes would argue that point strongly. It would be a dodgy win and it surprises me that Verstappen suggested it in the first place. The mentality of winning by hook or crook does not impress me. That should not be the ethos of the sport.

You could argue the Mercedes were exceeding track limits for most of the race. But there was no clear infringement at that stage of the race as they were led to believe it was ok to do that. Hence, it would not be fair to suggest that they cheated in any way.