And? Sometimes things don’t end the way we want.  Life is full of disappointments.

The rules say that it returns to the pits at the end of the FOLLOWING lap.

Well, that and the safety car not doing another lap, which is pretty clearly set out in the rules as being required.

Max was going to put his car on the inside if they were both on fresh tires, yeah.  Whether it was a pass or a crash, it would likely have gone his way.

Scoring goes down in basketball, you start calling hand checks tougher. Scoring goes down in baseball, you juice the balls. Scoring goes down in football, you call pass interference tighter. Scoring goes down in hockey, cut back on clutching and grabbing.

Can’t unlap until the track is fully clear, I believe (or at least that’s my memory of how it’s always worked to date).

I think you don’t get it. If they’d allowed the other cars to unlap themselves, it wouldn’t have left enough time to have a green flag lap, and the race would have ended under yellow (as it was, the safety car should have done another lap after the cars passed, per the rules).

What does that have to do with the failure to allow any lapped cars to unlap themsleves?

My aim would be for Danny Ric to win every race. I didn’t have a dog in the fight between the title contenders (if anything, my son’s a big Max fan, but six-year-olds don’t tend to care about minor things like adherence to the rules).

“any cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car.”

I *am* a lawyer and this decision was total bullshit based on the regs. 

I know, seems like he’d get off too easy.

Ah, all these new fans who don’t know what F1 is like (kidding... mostly)

There’s a rule as written. They didn’t follow it, just to create excitement.

Red flag and Lewis gets to change to fresh mediums, he (likely) wins.

I was joking that he took a while to get back to Mercedes because he was on the line with the Netflix crew instead.

British stewards for a British team?

Because they only let five cars unlap themselves, not ALL the lapped cars - which from what I understand is what the regs permit.

... fair point.

Mainly in Spain and Brazil.