Possible departure of Wolff and Hamilton: 'They still feel that pain'

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff were missing from the FIA gala where Max Verstappen was crowned as the new Formula One world champion. Karun Chandhok at Sky Sports his light on the feeling at Mercedes.

Disappointment at Mercedes

Losing your title on the last lap of the final race. Hamilton knows the other side of the coin after taking the title from Felipe Massa in the closing stages of 2008, but now also knows how the Brazilian must have felt. For so long he seemed on course for the title, but a crash by Nicholas Latifi brought an end to that dream. Wolff, therefore, expressed his doubts about the future in F1 for Lewis and himself.

''I think they're still feeling the pain of the title loss in Abu Dhabi. Personally, I would be surprised if we don't see either of them back in Bahrain next season at the opening Grand Prix. I think Lewis and Toto are hurt at the moment, but I think they want to come back and chase that goal of becoming World Champion for the eighth time and certainly Lewis does. That will set him as statistically the greatest of all time in all metrics of the sport,'' Chandhok said.

Breakdown for Hamilton

Chandhok, who argues that Verstappen is simply a deserving world champion over a whole year, does see where the pain is at Mercedes. In the final laps, the safety car situation was not followed correctly. If this had happened Lewis would also have lost but could have been pointed to bad luck, according to Chandhok.

''I think the way where the FIA could have really helped on themselves, is by making that decision (to let the lapped cars pass) earlier. If they had made that decision 30-40 seconds earlier, they would have got all the lapped cars passed, they could have made the decision before the penultimate lap and all the right procedures and processes would have been followed. Then everyone would have pointed out bad luck for Hamilton with Latifi's crash. The fact that the correct procedures were not followed to a T, this has created that storm (of criticism),'' Chandhok concludes.