Nico Rosberg Calls for F1 to ‘Tighten Up’ After Verstappen-Hamilton Controversies

The entire Mercedes garage, and we’d reckon, pretty much half of the F1 fandom, blew up when the stewards made the bizarre decision of letting lapped cars between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton unlap themselves on the penultimate lap of the title-deciding Abu Dhabi GP.

Many alleged biased ruling, which eventually led Hamilton to lose his title fight against Verstappen. Hence, such allegations made the Dutchman’s championship victory look unfair.

But, the former rival of Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, pointed out that the Briton had already escaped a penalty early on in the race. On the very first lap, Verstappen ran Hamilton off the track while the former managed to keep his car within the track limits.

Hamilton, meanwhile, cut the entire chicane and regained the lead, and also extended his gap to the Dutchman. So, what did the stewards do? They let Hamilton keep the position amidst Red Bull’s plea and Sky experts’ counter opinion.

What did Nico Rosberg say?

As reported by Motorsport Week, Rosberg admitted that F1 is in desperate need of progress after the poor show at Yas Marina, earlier in December.

“Big respect to Jean for his career, of course. But now with a new person, there’s an opportunity. The sport needs to make progress,” he told Sky Sports.

“It starts even with all the overtaking, the wheel-to-wheel action. Let’s not forget that in the race, Max Verstappen passed Lewis and kind of pushed him off a little bit. Lewis stayed flat out, cut the corner, and came out in front again. Even that, all of us experts said Lewis should let Max by here, but they didn’t ask him to.”

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FIA needs to tighten all that up: Rosberg

Rosberg opined that the stewards left one too many loose calls, which often led to controversies. Hence, with the new FIA president in place, the 2016 world champion is hoping that F1 will become more stringent, come 2022.

“The FIA needs to tighten all that up so that we don’t have all these discussions. It would be better for the sport if it was much easier to understand. Also in wheel-to-wheel racing; who is now right and wrong, what needs to be done. A quick decision is made, and we go on,” Rosberg concluded.

While many are alleging biased decision-making on the final lap, were the stewards contrastingly too lenient with Hamilton on the opening lap of the Abu Dhabi GP?

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