If he wanted to do that, and was willing to throw out everything that happened prior to the crash, then the fair way of doing that was to pull all the cars off the track, give them both the opportunity to change tires, and just made them do a single lap starting from the grid.
That would have been an even bigger deviation from the standard rules to what we saw, but yea why not, the guy has carte blanche to do whatever he wants
Not according to a certain Michael Masi last year…
https://mobile.twitter.com/Jon_Startin/status/1470337713933017091
The whole thing is massively unsatisfactory.
Hamilton was cheated out of it. He was the best driver all day long. Should have been number 8.
I don’t know where he goes from here. If I was him, I would be feeling deflated, and very tempted to retire. He has done everything, and more besides. OK, there is the elusive 8th title to go for, but will he be allowed to take hold of it? On the evidence of Sunday’s race, it doesn’t look like it. So will the motivation still be there to go to the well again? Will he still have the sheer force of will to continue to dig deep, while fighting the talented young pretender who bends the driving rules, while at the same time fighting against the people running the sport?
Only Lewis Hamilton knows what he wants to do, but I could well understand it if this is the catalyst for retirement.
Why would he want to retire?
He got a new deal, there’s the new car coming, the way he lost this battle (but also fought it!) should I think make him even more hungrier for the last few years he’s active.
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Fingers crossed 
Why retire? He’s got one of the best jobs in the world and gets paid a fortune to do it.
Hes not about to retire. The big question will be can he get up for another title run.
His biggest initial challenge is going to be both getting to grips with the new cars, and then whether or not he can outpace George Russell.
I’ve seen this comparsion a lot which is understandable if it’s what you would consider a fair defeat. This had nothing far about it, its like losing Champions league final to a blatant handball off a dubious free kick awarded by the referee and VAR saying its fine.
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And that single illegitimate goal counting more than the previous 8 legitimate ones you’d scored.
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I would say the closest analogy would be losing a CL from an injury time winner in the 6th minute of injury time when the ref should have only added 5.
No because the caveat on injury time is always a minimum time not set in stone time.
Just watching the point at which the crash occurred. Lap 53, Hamilton had the option of pitting knowing that doing so would mean he lost track position but would make him the fastest car after the restart, and Mercedes chose not to to keep track position.
At that point it wasn’t known whether the lapped cars would be ushered through or not. Verstappen obviously pitted once he knew Hamilton didn’t go in. Were Mercedes banking on the race finishing on a red flag?
It doesn’t really make sense for me. The pit crew were even ready with Hamilton’s fresh tyres.
Masi made the correct decision in the end, even if he made a massive cock-up by holding back the lapped cars on lap 56. Surely they could have cleared the lapped cars in a lap (56th) given they had already driven 3 laps under the safety car to force the bunch-up?
Seems Hamilton wasnt happy about not pitting at the time:
Hamilton: “what’s the situation?”
Bono: “The situation is that Verstappen has pitted he had a free pit stop… we would have lost track position to him. This field has to bunch, and they will have to send lapped cars through… so it may not restart”
Hamilton: "Is he behind me?”
Bono: “He will be. Once they sort out the order… this is going to take a while to sort out.”
Hamilton: “With new tyres?”
Bono: “Copy Lewis. We would have lost track position”.
Mercedes were expecting the lapped cars to go through. They even said it themselves. Hamilton himself found it incredulous that he wasn’t called in to pit. Incredibly unlucky to lose a championship from a late race crash but I find the decision not to pit a really fucking terrible decision.
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Oh it’s grossly unfair forsure. Just where I’m with it is all I was getting at. The result won’t change.
The confidence of Mercedes not to call Lewis in was based on past experience. That all lapped cars are usually let through and then after the following lap the safety car pulls in.
Thats what the rules state, notwithstanding the discretion available to masi. Mercedes took a calculated gamble, assuming the race would finish under SC or would restart but leave Max to have to overtake 4 cars. If Mercedes had brought Lewis in, Max would have stayed out on relatively fresh mediums, but Mercedes would still have been working basis of the two courses of actions taking place - finish under SC or lapped cars remain lapped and race carries on. Of the two options, Mercedes made the right call. Keep track position.
Masi binned off the rules ‘to go racing’, except it wasn’t fair racing given how much he moved the goalposts. It was unforseen by Mercedes (and quite frankly, the rest of the world) that Masi would do what he did.
Also, Lewis questioning the pitwall about decisions they’re making is quite normal. He often challenges Bono, and more often than not he’s left wrong as the strategy is right.
It completely depends on whether the field was bunched enough from laps 53 to 55 for the lapped cars to pass before the end of the race. Two laps to clear them and one to finish the race on a green. Was that possible?
Bono’s conversation with Hamilton clearly showed that for them, it wasn’t even in their thinking that the lapped cars would be held back. The only two options they had in their mind was (a) lapped cars being cleared so that Verstappen would be sitting behind Hamilton before the end (hence Hamilton’s panic in his comms with Bono) or (b) the race finishing on red.
Interesting that, unless there is a significant lag on the televising of comms that Wolff’s complaints only came about after Hamilton was overtaken.
I think everyone on here agrees they should have red flagged the race and have a grid restart if they wanted to finish the race on a green flag, which is what they really pushed through by bending the rules.
That would have been down to the safety of the Marshalls to get the car off the track with heavy machinery in a safe manner. The likelihood of something going wrong is very slim with cars going around at lower speeds under double yellows with heavy machinery on track, but after the death of Jules Bianchi at the Japanese grand prix in 2014/15, they appear to have stopped that practice altogether. Of course every situation needs to be judged on its merits at the time by Masi re. the safety of the drivers and track marshals.
Yeah but even with Max directly behind them, they were expecting to end behind SC. The race wouldn’t have ended on a red at that point. If the red were to be called (which is should have done imo) it would have been earlier.
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Any other race they finish under a safety car. MV pitted because he had nothing to lose, regardless. As LH was ahead of MV on the track, he didn’t have that luxury.
The track needed to be cleared, all lapped cars would then need to unlap themselves, then the following lap the SC comes in, then they race again. That is the correct order of things. There wasn’t enough time for that so the race should have finished under the SC, according to the rules and Masi’s own interpretation of those rules only a year ago.
That didn’t happen because Masi decided to ignore procedure and distort the competition.