Oh absolutely. My distaste for him stems from the way he’s conducted himself both on and off track since his arrival into F1, rather than the fact he beat (heavily caveatted 😉) LH last year. I’m not a die hard LH fan, I just prefer to see British success over others. I actually find Lando and George more likeable these days, what with LH being a pretty guarded individual these days - probably in response to his public faux pas over the years. I still appreciate drivers of other nationalities and hold LEC and Sainz in high regard. I wouldn’t take issue if either of them won the championship this year actually - although LEC seems more likely of the two tbh.
I can still be fair to Max too and gave him credit for doing a good job, hence my point about his better management at the conclusion of the VSC, which ultimately led to him being in Charles’ slipstream and winning. And I’d even go as far to say that, whilst I don’t think it was especially clever to try and drive off LH’s head, his lack of regard for LH was probably in response to the Silverstone incident. To borrow a very F1 expression, ‘for sure’ there was no malice in LH’s manoeuvre at Silverstone, but Horner and Marko definitely made enough noise to that effect to put some demons in Max’s head.
Back to the VSC… I do think that should be looked at. The creation of the VSC was to maintain the status quo of the race and not give any driver an advantage. Max was about 1.5-2 seconds behind when the VSC started and was under 1 second when it ended. Yes, you could argue that both drivers have the same rules, but clearly it can be exploited. The drivers have a delta displayed on their wheel and have to stay under it, why can’t the delta be the gap between the cars instead, so Max maintains that 1.5 gap… 🤷🏻♂️