F1 | Abu Dhabi GP | Latifi apologises for inadvertently getting involved in the championship fight because of his crash
Nicholas Latifi explained what caused his incident and apologized for influencing the and creating an opportunity, while Horner thanked him for the Safety Car.
Believe it or not, yesterday’s result in Abu Dhabi was set almost entirely by someone that had nothing to do with the world championship battle, if you don't count, of course, the wise choice of Red Bull strategists to stop Verstappen immediately under the SC conditions, a Safety car caused by Nicholas Latifi.
Lap 53, Latifi and Mick Schumacher were battling, when the German touched with the Williams, that quickly came back on track, but shortly after lost the rear and ended up straight into the wall at turn 14.
The Safety Car was inevitable, Hamilton's number one enemy at that time. There were five laps to go and it was clear that three or four of them would have been necessary to clear the track.
Mercedes decided to keep Lewis out, while Max went in the pits to try to overturn the result mounting soft tyres. The race restarted and lasted just for a lap, which was what Verstappen needed to take the the position on Hamilton and the world title.
After the race Latifi explained what caused his incident:
“We were just really struggling for grip through the next sequence of corners, and especially where I ended up going off,” he said.
“It’s been a tricky corner all weekend for me, so dirty tyres, dirty air and I made a mistake.
“I wasn’t aware of the situation of the race up until then. Obviously it was never my intention to inadvertently influence that, but I made a mistake and ruined my own race.”
“It was never my intention,” - he repeated - “And I can only apologise for influencing and creating an opportunity.
“But again, I made a mistake.”
No one wants to be in that position, ever, but eventually Latifi’s mistake was overshadowed by the FIA decisions and the duel between Red Bull and Mercedes on the stewards calls on what happened on track, that went on until 23:00 (local time).
After Verstappen was crowned champion, Christian Horner told Channel 4:
"He [Latifi] will be getting a lifetime supply of Red Bull for sure."
"That just about sums up this year I think because I said I think I called it on commentary that it was going to need something from the racing gods for the last ten laps.
"Thank you Nicholas Latifi for that safety car, and I have to say with the stewards, we felt hard done by early in the race, but they did great to get the race going again.”
