F1 love affair reignited by Lewis Hamilton vs Max Verstappen rivalry

The last time I wrote about Formula One, DRS was an independent sofa store just off the A40.

It’s not that I have a problem with it but, like many of a certain vintage, I haven’t really followed it behind the paywall. In an era of blanket live sport, my heart and subscription choices went elsewhere.

However, this weekend, like countless millions of other fair-weather fans, I will party like it’s 1994.

Try as I might, this season has just been impossible to ignore. I raised an eyebrow at the blow out in Baku, corpsed at the Copse Corner collision at Silverstone, got thirsty for more in Hungary and caught my heart in my actual mouth in Monza. Damn it. They had me at ‘halo’.

And when I say they, I mean Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen. We know that Formula One is a motorsport, a marriage of man and machine, but it is always at its best when it skews towards the former. Prost and Senna. Mansell and Piquet. Schumacher and Hill.

Throughout this season, on and off track, their relationship has sunk more quickly than Rose and Jack’s did in Titanic.

Out of the cockpit, they look around each other like former lovers in a lift, while in it they are all over each other like teenagers in the back row of a cinema.

However, what makes this rivalry beautiful is the age difference. Whether or not Lewis is the GOAT I will leave to more qualified people to discuss. But at 36, Hamilton boasts a joint-record seven world titles, with more wins, more poles and more podium finishes than any driver in history.

Then along comes Max, 12 years his junior and just as fast and furious as a young Hamilton. He is coming for his crown and age alone dictates he will, sooner or later, take it from him.

In Saudi Arabia, last weekend, viewers delighted and fumed in equal measure as Hamilton and Verstappen ensured no true sports fan could look away any longer.

The madness and mayhem, the chaos and controversy, the claims and counter-claims, have been well documented but what it boils down to is a winner-takes-all showdown, this weekend, in Abu Dhabi.

They go in level on points, a situation only seen once before in 1974, yet, remarkably, that is not the most dizzying scenario.

Verstappen will win the title should both fail to score any points, courtesy of having one more race win over the season. The easiest way for that to happen? A well-placed bump. In that 1994 finale, that’s exactly what happened; a young Michael Schumacher taking his first world title by a point from Damon Hill, after a crash that will live forever in Formula One infamy.

Given that these two have bumped uglies more times this year than the entire cast of Love Island, there are many speculating on history repeating itself.

After last weekend’s high drama, Hamilton said of Verstappen: ‘He’s over the limit, for sure. I’ve avoided collisions on so many occasions with the guy and I don’t always mind being the one that does that, because you live to fight another day. Which I obviously did.’

I don’t have the knowledge to apportion blame but I do know, throughout the history of F1, the line between genius and reckless has often been nigh on impossible to see with the human eye.

What I do have is the sporting sense not to miss a single second of this weekend’s action. I’m all in. Full throttle. No need to test the brakes even once, and the fact that Channel 4 has signed a deal to show the whole thing on free-to-air television is just wonderful.

It has been quite some time since I felt compelled to watch Formula One but, thanks to Max and Lewis, it’s once again a case of ‘Lights out… Go! Go! Go!’

For more stories like this, check our sport page.

Follow Metro Sport for the latest news onFacebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Source: Read Full Article