Originally Posted by ZCanadian

Still rather that the championship was decided on a flying lap than under an extended safety car.

If I were Masi, I'd have let Toto and Christian's calls go to voicemail, though. Last thing he needed was to deal with those two whiners while trying to figure out how to clear the track.

Lewis' race was compromised from the moment they called him in way too early to cover Max's pit stop (lap 14). Being in the lead at the SC, Mercedes had little choice but to leave him out, while Max got the soft tires and wing adjustment he needed to be competitive. I can see why Merc felt confident in staying the course, with the odds being that the race would either end under a waved yellow or that racing would resume with one or two laps to go and lapped cars between the two leaders.

The rule to clear the lapped cars is to allow for racing between the leading cars, and un-lapping these four or five and then ending the SC although not directly handing the trophy to Max, gave him that one last opportunity to take it.

That final lap, and Perez' crazy mad dogfight with Lewis on tires way to old to have done what he did (20 lap old reds), made this the best race of the season for me. Even if there were about 55 laps of snore-fest in between it all.