‘There shouldn’t be a ‘Max doesn’t deserve it’ side’

With fresh calls from some fans to scrap the final lap of the 2021 season, Daniel Ricciardo says Max Verstappen “absolutely” deserved to win the World title.

Verstappen won the 2021 Drivers’ Championship in controversial circumstances, although he was by no means in the wrong himself.

The Dutchman made a final lap pass on Lewis Hamilton to win the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, a race in which whomever of the two finished ahead would be crowned World Champion.

But as FIA race director Michael Masi has subsequently lost his job because of his decision-making in Abu Dhabi, although the FIA hasn’t actually said that was the reason why, there are fresh calls from some fans to declare the race result prior to the Safety Car.

That would mean the title would go to Hamilton, the Briton taking his record-breaking eighth.

That, however, is not going to happen, the race result remaining the same with a P1 for Verstappen on the day and in the championship.

Ricciardo says while it is a “shame” how it all played out, he reckons Verstappen deserved to win. But then again, so did Hamilton.

“That was kind of, in a way, the shame with [what happened in Abu Dhabi],” he said as per RacingNews365.com.

“There was always going to be a winner and a loser last year, no matter how the last race ended, even if it was a boring last lap finish.

“But they both truly deserved a title. They’ve both done phenomenal races, they both come back, and so someone was always going to lose out, I guess.

“Obviously there’s the Lewis side, but there shouldn’t be a ‘Max doesn’t deserve it’ side, because he absolutely also deserved it.”

And as Verstappen’s former team-mate, one who beat the Dutchman in 2016 and again in 2017, Ricciardo jokingly added: “I’m pretty much a