Lewis Hamilton’s title duel with Max Verstappen could turn nasty in fiery final showdowns, warns Damon Hill

Getty Images

Damon Hill has warned the 2021 title race has the potential to get nasty, as Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen battle it out at this weekend’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The pair resume their battle for the drivers’ crown at the inaugural race, the penultimate grand prix of the season, with Verstappen boasting an eight-point advantage over the seven-time world champion.

Two years before he became world champion in 1996, Hill was denied the title after a clash at the season decider in Australia with Michael Schumacher — and he believes things could end in a similar fashion come this season’s finale.

“It’s very difficult to resist the temptation to defend vigorously if you’ve got a points advantage and you’re in the lead,” he said. “I just don’t know how you would let that through your fingers.

“We saw it with Alain Prost [at the 1989 season-ending Japanese Grand Prix]. You’d never expect that with Prost, the mild-mannered, meek, gentle guy, he was to close the door on Ayrton Senna, but that certainly looks like what happened.”

Victory for Hamilton this weekend, along with the fastest lap at a circuit expected to suit Mercedes, would leave him level on points with Verstappen going into the final race in Abu Dhabi a week on.

But Hill insists Verstappen is still in the driving seat to clinch a first world title.

“I think you have to say the points advantage is the nicer place to be, even if you don’t have the most competitive car,” he said.

“There’s only so much Lewis can do and effectively he has to get a 100 per cent perfect score between now and the end of the season — and you’d have to say the odds are against him to do that.”

For Hill, there are understandably echoes of this season and his duel with Schumacher back in 1994, which ended in dramatic fashion in the season finale in Adelaide, with the German leading by a solitary point from his British rival.

Schumacher hit the barriers, came back onto the track and drove into Hill, taking him out of the race and the title battle. Schumacher, who always claimed it was a racing incident, was blamed by many within F1 for what happened but no action was taken by the race stewards and Williams did not appeal that decision.

“I had a fantastic penultimate race to keep the whole championship alive,” said Hill.

“It was like a real boiling crucible of press attention, the world’s attention totally on that race.

“That’s what will happen with these two last two races — people are going to want to know how this story ends.

“All I remember is I felt very much like I couldn’t wait for it to be over. It was stressful and I was not used nor primed in my mid-30s to be dealing with an F1 championship battle. In contrast, Lewis has been at it for decades and this is Max’s seventh season in F1.”

Getty Images

While Hill felt the burden of pressure, Hamilton and Verstappen have managed to look completely at ease with the title coming down to the wire. Hill puts that down to both of them being good actors.

He said: “Can they seriously give a Gallic shrug and say, ‘Whatever happens, happens?’ Can they seriously not want that title so much and go to sleep the night before the race and think to themselves, ‘I’ve tried my best, I’ll see what happens?’

“I could not sleep a wink, I tried everything. I was awake for 48 hours before I won my world title and then didn’t sleep after it.

“But saying that, Max has coped brilliantly. Take Zandvoort [home of his home Dutch Grand Prix], where all he could do really was disappoint, and he delivered in bucket loads. And take Lewis, he is such an old, professional campaigner. He knows how to cope with these things.

“He just winds up towards the end, when he needs to find more, he goes deep inside somewhere and gets more. It’s incredible to watch and it doesn’t seem to exhaust him.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in