Mexico was inexcusable, don’t get me wrong ? Inevitably there’s a fine line. That was well over it. Max will defend his driving, and he’ll argue for more leeway that he can exploit.
I’m not saying that it sits well with me: I don’t really like watching that level of combat in open wheel racing and I generally wouldn’t want to be on track with him. I’m not a fan of him or how he goes racing, but I generally (Mexico aside) file him under “utterly ruthless” with Senna rather than under “dirty cheat” with Schumacher. Thing is, there’s no denying that utter ruthlessness is brutally effective. The difference is that Senna drove in an era where an incident like Silverstone 21 would have been fatal, maybe even Monza 21. Rightly or wrongly, Max doesn’t have that natural constraint.
With his comments about people overtaking him on the outside I guess he’s completely cool about Silverstone 2021 now!
Again, though, wasn’t a case of overtaking on the outside. Hamilton was trying to pass on the inside.
But it’s a good example of having to test the letter of the law: watching it as it happened with a “spirit of the law” perspective, it looked to me that Hamilton had made a bit of a foolhardy effort at the wrong corner—but when the dust settled and the actual wording of the regulations at the time were explained, it turned out that Hamilton appeared to have driven correctly within the letter of the law and he’d given Max a taste of his own medicine, albeit at quite a punchy corner to say the least.
