Like it or not, the question of validity will be posed on Monday morning after Formula One’s longest-ever season decides a champion.
Would a Lewis Hamilton championship be fair should disaster befall his teammate in the season-ending race, as must almost certainly happen for him to claim his fourth crown?
Or will Nico Rosberg be deserving of the championship, given Hamilton’s late-season engine failure in Malaysia and subsequent psychological collapse?
Hamilton has long been on the offensive in this regard, and his not-at-all-subtle Rosberg-directed barbs in Brazil attempted to set this weekend’s tone.
“Nico’s driving at his best right now, and today he had nothing on me,” the Briton said, before re-emphasising his belief that only unreliability has prevented him from tying up the title.
Rosberg has been inert to the pressure for almost the entire season, staying true to his one-race-at-a-time mantra.
Whatever the outcome, neither driver will escape Sunday’s race mud free.
But what if neither (or perhaps both) are right? Will either be truly deserving? Is there even such a thing as a deserving world champion?
If you want to talk about some of F1’s all-time legendary moments, it’s hard to mount such an argument.
Championships have been coloured by team orders. In 1956, F1 icon Juan Manuel Fangio famously won his fourth of five titles when one of his Ferrari teammates, Peter Collins, was ordered to surrender his own shot at the championship by swapping cars with the Argentinian.
Injury, too, has played a part in the deciding of key seasons. Keke Rosberg – fitting that he would appear on this list – won the 1982 championship not just with a single win all season, but after title rival Didier Pironi broke his legs in the fifth-last round, ruling him out of the rest of the year.
Likewise, who can forget the dramatic 1976 season, in which James Hunt famously won his sole championship – but only after Niki Lauda’s fiery crash at the German Grand Prix ruled him out of the following two races?
But perhaps the most questionable results came about under one of the sport’s most questionable rules.
In 1964, Graham Hill was robbed of a championship due to the ‘dropped points’ regulation: Hill scored 41 points to John Surtees’ 40, but because only a driver’s best six results counted towards the title, he would wind up behind his compatriot by a single point.
The story was much the same for – whisper it – Alain Prost, in his defeat at the hands of Ayrton Senna in 1988.
The Frenchman easily outscored F1’s most famous driver, 105 points to 94, but he was forced to drop 18 points to the Brazilian’s four and finished second in the standings.
Then, of course, there are the anomaly seasons. On his way to his only title, Jenson Button won six of the first seven races in 2009 – and that’s it. He finished on the podium just twice in the remaining ten rounds once rival teams caught up on the year’s trick aerodynamic part, the double diffuser.
Four years later, Sebastian Vettel stormed to his 2013 championship with nine wins from ten races after Pirelli changed its tyre construction at the Hungarian Grand Prix following widespread abuse of the stock rubber by the teams, Red Bull Racing included.
And for the truly ambiguous titles, look no further than Michael Schumacher’s 1994 triumph, recorded after a ‘racing incident’ that forced championship rival Damon Hill into retirement. It would prove remarkably similar to the move he tried to pull on Jacques Villeneuve in an attempt to deprive the Canadian of his 1997 championship – but that year Schumacher was disqualified for his efforts.
Are any of these decorated world champions somehow lesser for the circumstances in which they won their titles? Has James Hunt gone down as undeserving, Juan Manuel Fangio as anything other than perhaps the sport’s best driver, or Ayrton Senna as a mere conjuring of a regulatory quirk? Certainly not.
Sure, Hamilton’s grip on this championship slipped, perhaps ultimately, after an engine failure – much as Rosberg’s did in 2014 when his electrics failed in Singapore and ERS failed at the season finale, neither of which is held against Hamilton’s career triple.
These are the vagaries of racing. The only certainty in F1 is that the points don’t lie – even when the points are dropped – and the only kind of champion is the one who scores more points than his rivals, as will be the case this Sunday in Abu Dhabi.
So may the best driver win – whatever that means.
Follow Michael on Twitter @MichaelLamonato
Michael Lamonato
Expert
That's a good point! No-one really does talk about that, but I'd say it's fair to consider it like this.
anon
Guest
What no-one talks about is that Rosberg was taken out by Hamilton making a mistake in Spain. Rosberg would have likely cruised to victory. So Hamilton's Malaysia blow up is merely evening up the score in that regard.
Rodney Gordon
Expert
Well, talk about having solid reliability - Hamilton had one retirement in 2015 to Rosberg's two. AND, if Hamilton had broken down in Russia instead of Rosberg it would represent a 50 point turnaround and the gap at the end of the season would have been only 9 points.
Michael Lamonato
Expert
That's true — rivalries are most visceral when there's perceived or actual injustice or unfairness. With Rosberg, though, I'd be concerned losing the title now would water him down even more — his lack of fightback in 2015 sets a pretty disappointing template. On the other hand I'd like to think winning a championship and that high that comes with it could push him to the next level, like it has for a bunch of drivers. The effect it'd have on the Hamilton-Rosberg dynamic would also be interesting. Maybe he'd even enter brunch-territory charisma levels.
Michael Lamonato
Expert
As for Massa! Well, we only need to think about the infamous 2008 Singapore Grand Prix and the effect it had on his points tally! But similarly Hamilton probably should've won in 2007, were it not for his own team's incredibly disunity.
Michael Lamonato
Expert
He certainly was in 2014 — he was in pretty much the same position going into this year's Singapore Grand Prix as he was that that year's race — but technical troubles put him on the back foot, and now the points difference between the two Mercedes drivers have almost exactly reversed. So if Hamilton and Rosberg are evenly matched this year, it follows it was a similar story that year. Definitely agree on the second point, too. Rosberg's already done the work. A championship is made up of more than the last four races. Nothing makes wins in the first four rounds of the year less valuable than wins at the last four.
Zach C
Guest
Upsets due to the unexpected or ‘unfair’ are a part of the larger, meta F1 narrative. You root for Ricciardo when he starts showing up Vettel at Red Bull, because it seems like justice - having just seen Webber be dogged by team orders and suspected mechanical skullduggery. Lauda’s terrible accident may have unfairly cost him a championship, but it made his subsequent titles that much more inspiring and incredible - having seen other drivers totally lose their edge after much, much smaller crashes. The championship may just slip between Rosberg’s fingers, but it’ll hang a shadow over him next season and make him more compelling. Which is good, because I’ve had breakfasts with more charisma than Rosberg. Stories needs light and shade, and there needs to be frustration, disappointment, and failure to elevate a driver’s story. Not just across a season, but across their career. You don’t get complex rivalries like Senna and Prost without unfairness.
Rodney Gordon
Expert
Lol, if Massa had won in 2008 I'm sure you'd believe there are worthy champions :p The truth is Rosberg was way closer to Hamilton in the last two years than most people are willing to admit. It's also telling that people excuse Hamilton finishing behind Rosberg for the last three races last year when the title was wrapped up, but poo-poo Rosberg for doing to the same in his pursuit of the title this year.
Michael Lamonato
Expert
Yeah, and the physical mechanical element is probably about 50 per cent of the game, at least when you count the possibility of a problem influencing the result. Even with risk management and the amount of stress testing teams can do to their cars in the factories, there's always that risk — but that will always be part of the sport. It's cruel, as you say, but I suppose that's part of why we love it — there's always a risk that tragedy will disrupt the narrative, like it did in Malaysia this year or in any of the other examples. And at the end of the day it's the driver who has best plays the hand dealt to him who wins.
marfu
Guest
Thanks for researching those memories of previous injustices which I had forgotten about. It can be a cruel sport as there seems to be more that can go wrong than right as there are so many physical factors involved in determining who wins before even Lady Luck intervenes. Saying that, it is probably one of the sports where risk management is taken to the highest level with cross checks and fail safe backup systems designed to virtually eliminate luck being a factor but it is impossible to control all eventualities. I think it is the same as life in that it isn't always fair or just and after all it is only a sport in which most times, nice guys finish last.