New Red Bull and Mercedes details emerge after hugely controversial F1 2021 season

Sky F1 pundit Karun Chandhok has lifted the lid on the off-track war between Red Bull and Mercedes during the F1 2021 title battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.

The 2021 stands as one of the most dramatic seasons in F1 history as Verstappen and Hamilton battled all the way from Bahrain in March to Abu Dhabi in December.

How Red Bull and Mercedes battled for off-track supremacy in F1 2021.

Both the title protagonists have come to blows in several instances last year, with Verstappen ,ending up in the hospital for a routine examination after a particularly brutal first-lap crash with Hamilton at Silverstone’s British GP.

The two were also involved in a heated confrontation at the Italian Gran-Prix where Verstappen and Hamilton clashed at the first chicane with Verstappen’s Red Bull rising over the Mercedes.

The title was decided in extremely contentious conditions during the Abu Dhabi decider when Verstappen earned his maiden World Championship with a pass on Hamilton on the last lap after Masi, the FIA race director, did not apply the Safety Car rules properly, essentially fixing up a one-lap race.

Fights and incidents from F1 2021 season are still being discussed to this day From then, former Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said: Abu Dhabi race was a s**tshow of biblical proportions last week.

Speaking of the competition between Hamilton and Verstappen, Chandhok did it from the,Sky F1 television pundit, having transferred to the broadcaster from the Channel 4 at the beginning of 2021.

He’s revealed how forces within the Mercedes and Red Bull camps applied pressure on pundits in an attempt to “sway” the narrative.

Asked during a Reddit Q&A session to identify the most complex issue he has covered, Chandhok said: “I would have to say the 2021 F1 season.

“It was such a rollercoaster and really trying to look at, for example, the big moments, the accident at Silverstone and then obviously the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that year, arguably the most controversial race we’ve had in recent F1 history.

“It was such a difficult race to try and break down.

And even today there are people who are still upset and emotional when we talk about that race.

“It was clearly a weekend and a season where there was so much pressure from the paddock and you had all these people from within the Red Bull and the Mercedes camps telling you things, trying to get you to sway your opinion.”

The 2021 title protagonists have had contrasting fortunes since that season, with Verstappen storming to three consecutive World Championships after Red Bull emerged as F1’s dominant force under the ground-effect regulations introduced in 2022.

Verstappen currently holds a 52-point lead over McLaren’s Lando Norris with six races remaining of the F1 2024 campaign and could be set to become only the second driver in F1 history – after Sebastian Vettel, who dominated F1 with Red Bull between 2010 and 2013 – to win his first four World Championships consecutively.

Hamilton, for his part, endured the longest stretch of point-less races he had ever experienced in his career in the following year for Mercedes who could not harness the ground-effect regulations well enough before he finally clinched a remarkable last-memory victory at Silverstone on the seventh of July.

Verstappen facing an F1 future with Red Bull before moving to Ferrari from F1 2025 said it earlier this year and then weeks later, celebrated a record-breaking decide at Spa with a win in the Belgian Grand Prix taking career victories to 105.

In July, Verstappen gave more details about the consequences of his Silverstone 2021 crash, admitting that he had blurred vision for months after the accident with Hamilton at Copse Corner.

Verstappen’s worst moments were seen in the final stages of the United States Grand Prix in October 2021 when he faired off Hamilton in a nail- biting final stretch to clinch a crucial victory by a mere 1.33 seconds ahead of Hamilton as the Dutch pushed towards a first world championship.

In an interview with Red Bull’s in-house magazine the Red Bulletin, Verstappen said that he ‘seriously thought about pulling out’ after finding it hard to concentrate in Austin, Texas.

He said: “I knew from my Silverstone crash I had some issues with visibility on circuits that are bumpy or have heavily advertising banners at the sides of tracks.

“In this race [Austin 2021], I was not only competing with Lewis but also with the blurs.

It was like driving the speed boat at top speed … at 300 km per hour!! I have never boldly admitted this but at one point it was so sever for a few laps that you wished to switch off the car.

The only thing that worked was to focus on my breathing as Lewis was breathing right on my neck.

Thus, a very significant victory which at one point or the other I really wanted in the championship fight.”