Verstappen was battling with Lewis Hamilton for the drivers’ championship heading into the season finale that year but looked set to lose out to the Brit, with Red Bull unable to match the pace of Mercedesat the Yas Marina Circuit.
However, a late spanner was thrown into the works when Nicholas Latifi crashed his Williams with just five laps remaining in the race, with his wrecked car stuck in the middle of the track.
Naturally, the safety car was called out, but what transpired next went down as one of the most controversial endings to a race ever.
What happened at Abu Dhabi 2021?
Being behind Hamilton, when the safety car hit the track, Verstappen gambled on the race eventually restarting and pitted for soft tyres, but Hamilton did not for fear of losing track position to the Dutchman.
Hamilton’s call looked to be the right one, with the race looking like it would finish under the safety car. However, race director Michael Masi then ripped up the rulebook and controversially only allowed certain cars to unlap themselves, getting the action going again for one final lap of racing.
Despite Hamilton’s best efforts, he could not keep Verstappen behind on fresher tyres, with the Dutchman eventually passing him to win the race and the championship.
Mercedes were in an uproar and so were sections of the F1 fandom, feeling Hamilton should have been an eight-time champion.
Newey was asked about how Verstappen dealt with the backlash surrounding that incident on the High Performance Podcast, to which he gave an intriguing answer.
