The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix will go down in history as perhaps the most controversial race of the past decade. Mercedes’ reigning 7-time world champion Lewis Hamilton and  Red Bull’s rising hotshot Max Verstappen have been at each other’s throats all season, and it came to a head around the debuting track of Jeddah. 

Going into the race, Hamilton sat eight points off Verstappen’s lead. Since first place earns seven more points than second place and fastest lap earns another point, the Mercedes driver would need to both win the race and claim fastest lap to go into the season finale in a dead tie. Hamilton was coming off back-to-back wins in Brazil and Qatar, and the margin from Red Bull’s utter domination early in the season was getting chipped away with every checkered flag.

​Jedda Corniche Circut, the track where the race was held, was almost as peculiar as the title fight. The layout was only finalized earlier in the week, and the qualities of the track were seemingly so odd as to hope to distract from Saudi Arabia’s terrible human rights record. Of the twenty-two venues to host a race this season, the circuit was the second-longest, the second-fastest, and one of the least-wide, leading to little room for a car to slowdown or adjust before hitting a surrounding wall. It was a strange amalgam of what a casual fan would want from an F1 track, as the drivers are at full throttle for 80% of the 27-turn, 3.84 mile circuit, but serious crashes in early sessions and the F2 races led to widespread anxiety about the dangerous combination.

During qualifying—where the starting order is decided by a single timed lap around circuit—Verstappen put himself into the position to take pole (meaning he would start in front of the other drivers) early in his drive but hit the wall on the final turn and gave the best position to Hamilton. There was some concern than Verstappen would need to repair certain parts of his car because of the crash and start behind even more drivers, but fortunately for the young phenom, that was not the case.

The race itself saw 25% of the drivers retire (meaning not finish the race by giving up or crashing) and many more endure serious collisions while jockeying for position. Hamilton maintained a healthy lead from the Red Bull in the first fifteen laps but lost out to Verstappen during the first safety car due to a quirk in the rules. On the restart, Hamilton made a move to pass Verstappen but got forced wide and had to concede first place to his rival. The stewards—the effective referees of Formula One—decided to penalize Verstappen for forcing Hamilton off the race track but gave him the choice of accepting a penalty or trying his luck with a review, a choose-your-own-adventure liberty completely unheard of from the governing body. 

Verstappen then ran Hamilton off the track again when he tried to pass, and the team at Red Bull told the young Dutchman to slow down so that Hamilton could get the place he would have earned earlier. However, the message was not relayed to Hamilton, who collided with the back of the Red Bull when it unexpectedly slowed down in front of him. After getting hit, Verstappen elected to not give the place up to Hamilton and sped off while everyone else tried to process what had just occurred. This infamous “Lap 37” incident will go down as one of the strangest clashes between two rivals in what was already an absurd race.

The stewards again told Verstappen to slow down, and the Red Bull did so for a moment before again accelerating and retaking the lead from a perplexed Hamilton. Vertsappen would later give Hamilton first place when no one told him he needed to. 

Needless to say, fans of the sport are divided into two camps: Verstappen’s Orange Army and “#Blessed” Hamilton fans. Voices polled students who watched Formula One to see how they felt about Sunday’s proceedings. Half of the surveyed were team Verstappen, while the other half were biased towards Lewis Hamilton.

63% thought that Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes W12 was an objectively quicker car than Max Verstappen’s Red Bull RB16, while the same percentage favored Red Bull’s strategy and racecraft over Mercedes’. 

63% again thought the Verstappen had been the dirtier driver throughout the season, saying things like “Verstappen is young and reckless. He can’t handle the pressure,” “Verstappen is too aggressive,” with a dissenter saying “Hamilton is a seasoned veteran battling against basically a kid.”  (Hamilton is 36 in his 15th season of the highest level of racing, while Verstappen is in 8th season having started as a 17 year old and now being 24.)

75% thought Lewis would have won without the stewards forcing Verstappen to give up first place, and the same amount believed Verstappen did the right thing by continuing to race aggresively during qualifying despite eventually crashing.

Interestingly, 63% think Hamilton will go on to win the title, but 75% think Verstappen deserves to take the championship. Explanations for Verstappen’s superior form read, “Verstappen’s season has been plagued with poor luck,” “if you look at poles, overtakes, laps led, podiums, and wins throughout the season, Max leads nearly every major category,” and “Verstappen was dominant early in the season in a way Lewis has never managed.”

Opinions for the most tense moment of the season split between Hamilton sending Verstappen into a wall at 160 mph and thereby knocking him unconscious in England, Verstappen driving into Hamilton and rolling over the Briton’s head protected only by the metal “halo” in Italy, and Verstappen suddenly slamming on the breaks in Saudi Arabia.

75% think that, if they somehow tie in the final race, the tiebreaker should be amount of wins, while 25% reason is should be most grand slams (the feat of claiming pole, leading all the laps, taking fastest lap, and winning the race).

The final bout will occur next week in Abu Dhabi. Hamilton and Verstappen are tied for points but Verstappen is in the lead since he was won more times this season. Hamilton is now on a three-race winning streak, the first that either driver has managed to maintain this season, and hopes to claim his 8th world title with a favorable finish on Sunday. Verstappen, conversely, will be looking for his first. Whatever occurs will undoubtedly be a historic moment, and the world awaits the finale to this epic season of Formula One racing.