How Lewis Hamilton should already be a 10-time World Champion

The 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix will forever be remembered for howthe title was decided and the fact that Lewis Hamilton lost out ona record-breaking eighth World Championship. But what if he shouldhave already been a 10-time champion by the time of that night atYas Marina? That's right, forget Abu Dhabi. Through mechanicalgremlins and a forgotten accident, Hamilton has lost out on threeWorld Championships that would have rendered Abu Dhabi moot. Youcould also maybe add 2012 to the list below as McLaren had thefastest car, but repeated operational and reliability failures costHamilton a shot at challenging Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonsoin his final year before moving to Mercedes for 2013. 2007 Hamiltonset out his stall quite early in his F1 career, by dancing theMcLaren around the outside of Alonso at Turn 1 in his first race inAustralia. Nothing quite like telling the World Champion what youthink of the #1 sticker on his car. Tensions bubbled away betweenthe two all season, with the infamous Hungarian GP qualifying aflashpoint that had been brewing since Monaco when Hamilton waseffectively told to hold position behind Alonso - multi-12, if youlike. Come the penultimate race of the year - McLaren had beenfined $100 million for Spygate and chucked out the Constructors',but with a three-way title battle brewing, good cop BernieEcclestone managed to convince bad cop Max Mosley not to bootHamilton or Alonso out of the Drivers'. Heading to China, Hamiltonhad 107 points, Alonso 95 and Kimi Raikkonen 90. These were thedays of 10 points for a win, so Raikkonen had a 17 point gap tomake up with just 20 left on the board. All Hamilton had to do wasfinish within one point of Alonso and six of Raikkonen to win thetitle. But McLaren, engaging in open warfare against Alonso - theirown driver - kept Hamilton out on worn intermediates so much sothat he skated into a gravel trap when finally pitting as Raikkonenwon. That meant the standings were Hamilton 107, Alonso 103 andRaikkonen 100 heading to Brazil. Hamilton was forced wide at Turn 4on the opening lap, before gearbox gremlins dropped him well downthe field and forced him into a recovery drive, but tyredegradation was high. He needed fifth to win the title if Raikkonenwon, but could only manage a lapped seventh as Raikkonenfortuitously jumped team-mate Felipe Massa in the finalpit-stops... Raikkonen emerged victor by a point, with Hamiltonsince hinting that he now knows what exactly went onbehind-the-scenes, politically, but that he cannot talk about it ashis hopes of being a rookie World Champion imploded. 2010 This issomething of a forgotten lost championship for Hamilton - but stemsfrom his DNF with two laps to go in the Spanish Grand Prix. Runningsecond behind Mark Webber, Hamilton suffered a tyre rim failurethat pitched him into the Turn 3 barrier, costing him 18 points,and handing three more each to Vettel and Alonso. Come the finalstandings after the four-way shootout in Abu Dhabi, as the tablesbelow show, Hamilton finished on 240 points, 16 behind championVettel. If those lost 18 points are added, and Vettel loses thethree bonus he got in Barcelona, Hamilton wins the title by fivepoints. Had 2007 also gone his way, victory in 2010 would have beenhis third title from four years in F1. Actual 2010 F1 standings IfHamilton finishes second at the Spanish GP 2016 Most of the talkabout losing the 2016 title came from the engine failure Hamiltonsuffered while leading in Malaysia - one of a spate he sufferedthat year. But, that is not what cost him. Fluffing his starts onmultiple occasions from pole position did. In Australia, Bahrain,Spain and Italy, he started on pole, and failed to win any of them- famously crashing out in Spain with team-mate Nico Rosberg. InMelbourne and at Monza, Hamilton finished second to Rosberg, with aswing of 14 points apiece while he could only manage third inBahrain, a 20-point swing to Rosberg. The then-annual funk weekendin Azerbaijan also cost him a 30-point swing as Rosberg won whileengine setting troubles meant Hamilton could only manage fifth. Inthe end, Rosberg would win the title by just five points - and thenpromptly did the biggest mic drop of all-time by walking away andretiring, ensuring Hamilton could never take the title back offhim.