his behaviour in combat with Hamilton, which earned him two separate time penalties, was unflinchingly fierce in its intensity and at times it felt as though Max, requiring Hamilton to run into difficulty in order to secure the title, was trying to provoke or lure Lewis into trouble. Oliver Harden on the Planet F1 website.

“I respect him as a driver, but the rest…nothing,” Jos Verstappen, Max Verstappen’s father talking about Lewis Hamilton to the Daily Mail

Wow! What a crazy race last Sunday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was. Lewis Hamilton won from the pole position but it was way more difficult than that, and way more fun, and nerve-racking. Now, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen are tied in championship points with only one race left, so winner takes all. Sort of: Max has won more races than Lewis, so, if there is an accident and neither one of them finishes the next race, Max wins.

A couple of years ago, before Lewis Hamilton won his seventh title, somebody asked Martin Brundle, a former F1 driver but then a color guy – or pundit – on Sky Sports, who he thought was the best driver, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumaker, or Lewis Hamilton. Brundle said, Hamilton because he never drives dirty like Shumy or Senna.

There is a scene in Downton Abby – this is the same subject, trust me – at a luncheon for Rose’s wedding to Atticus Aldridge, that has stuck with me. The Crawley clan has already met the parents of Rose’s fiancé, the Aldridges, but the Aldridges have not met Rose’s parents and everybody is on their best behavior. Rose’s mother, Susan MacClare, the Lady Flintshire, who we already know is a boorish bigot, asks if the Aldridges are “even one bit English” and then asks Rachel Aldridge if she “finds it difficult these days to get staff?” and Rachel Aldridge answers, “Not really….but then we’re Jewish so we pay well.”

The implication in Rachel’s answer – maybe more than an implication – is that she, and her husband, pay well because they are Jewish. They do not want to be thought of as tightwads because it not only reflects on them, it reflects on all Jewish people. Rose’s mother, Susan doesn’t have that problem. If Susan is an asshole, it doesn’t reflect on White people, nobody says that all White people are assholes because Susan is. If Robert Crawley, or Lord Grantham for that matter, doesn’t pay his staff enough, it doesn’t reflect on other White people, but that is a privilege that the Aldridges do not have.

In the Formula One race last weekend, Max Verstappen ended up getting three reprimands. Two of the reprimands involved adding time penalties to Max’s total time, and one of them was for brake-checking Lewis. Brake-checking is when a driver hits the brakes to force a tailgater to back away. It is a dangerous and illegal move and very very dangerous while racing in a car without brake lights. Max had just passed Lewis by going off the track which is not legal and had been told by Race Control to “Give the position back.” But Lewis had not yet been told and was right behind Max when, in the middle of a straightaway, braked suddenly and decelerated at 2.7 G. As an aside, if you jam the brakes on in a decent sports car with anti-lock breaks, you can stop at about 1.25 G. End aside. Max’s braking was hard enough, so that Lewis, right behind him, ran into Max, damaging Lewis’s front wing. Often, hitting another car with a front wing is enough to knock the wing off but, somehow, the impact only knocked an endplate off of Lewis’ car. It was impetuous, even childish, maybe even thuggish, as they were going over a hundred miles an hour and Max was fined with a ten-second penalty but, that’s it. Because of Max, nobody says that all White people are thugs, very few people even say that Max is a thug. Nobody said that thuggery is typical of White people but Lewis Hamilton does not have that privilege any more than Rebeca Aldridge.

Both of these drivers want to win the Championship and the next race, at the Yas Marina Circut in Abu Dhabi this coming Sunday, should be very close. Lewis Hamilton has been here before and he has won the last three races, so he has the better odds. Unless Max crashes them both out. That Max may try a crash if he is losing looks more likely than it did a year ago, still, my money is on Lewis.