The Clusterf*#k in Abu Dhabi - Why the Trauma Was So Much Bigger than Sports

What should have been Lewis Hamilton's Eighth World Championship

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After his loss at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix -- and with it, the World Championship -- Lewis Hamilton reflected in an interview:

"...it can be a traumatic experience when you lose something that you worked hard for.... I think that will always be a part of me but I would like to think that I've gained strength from it... I [just remind] myself of the strength that I have within..."

As a psychotherapist, I was struck by his use of the word "trauma". I imagined there were people who heard him use the term and thought:

Really? Trauma? Over a race?

Especially when Hamilton is one of the most successful F1 racers in history with wealth, accolades, and accomplishments beyond what most people can imagine.

And yet, this wasn't just a race. It was the race - the race that decided the World Championship and would have secured Hamilton a record-breaking, history-making eighth world title — breaking his tie with Michael Schumacher, something no other driver has ever come close to achieving.

As the race played out in real time and Max Verstappen of Red Bull was declared the winner, I noticed I felt traumatised as well as I watched the Red Bull garage celebrate. I remember thinking, “Do none of them care they’re winning like this --- by total bullshit? Am I in the twilight zone? This result has to be overturned.” In the days that followed, I felt physically sick every time I heard Team Principal of Red Bull, Christian Horner, insist that Verstappen “deserved” the win --- a win he so clearly didn't "deserve".*(see side note below for more on Red Bull's celebration)*

I was also surprised by the intensity of my reaction: why would someone like me --- just a fan watching from afar without a personal connection to Hamilton --- feel anything close to trauma over his loss? I knew my feelings weren't remotely close to the intensity of what Hamilton was experiencing but I still felt something that I thought was a traumatic response.

A Critical Piece in The Puzzle

The truth is, Lewis Hamilton didn’t lose the race in Abu Dhabi—his victory was taken from him. In a blatant misapplication of the rules, race director Michael Masi handed Max Verstappen the win on a silver platter. Hamilton had led from the start and was comfortably ahead when a late crash brought out the safety car. Had standard procedures been followed, he would’ve crossed the finish line in first, behind the safety car. Instead, Masi made an unprecedented call: allowing only some lapped cars to unlap themselves, then pulling the safety car in early—setting up one final lap that gave Verstappen, on fresher tires, the chance to pass. That move decided the race, and with it, the championship.

Let's not sugarcoat it, Verstappen won the 2021 World Championship because rules were bent and misapplied. And anyone who values sportsmanship and watched this play out, should have been incensed.

It's not just that Hamilton lost --- it's how he lost that is important for our understanding and I wanted to explore the following questions, not as a racing expert, but as a therapist, to explain why moments like these carry much deeper emotional weight:

Why Might the Loss of One Race Feel Traumatic To Lewis Hamilton?

(with the caveat that I don't know Hamilton personally - these are simply hypothetical reflections)

& Why Might a Spectator Feel Traumatised By the Outcome?

Defining Trauma

In American psychology, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), defines trauma as involving an immediate threat to life, physical injury, or sexual violence. That's a fairly limited definition --- one that doesn't fully encompass the wide range of human suffering.

Other organisations take a broader view. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines trauma as an event or circumstance that results in physical or emotional harm and has lasting effects on a person’s well-being—mental, physical, emotional, social, or even spiritual. Globally, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), maintained by the World Health Organisation includes events that are “threatening or horrific” and from which escape is difficult or impossible.

In short: there is no single definition of trauma. And if we rely on just one, we’re likely using a definition that’s too narrow.

In both my professional work and personal life, I've come to understand that violations of fairness and justice --- whether experienced firsthand or witnessed --- can cause trauma.

These events may not involve physical harm or even directly impact us, but they disrupt our core sense of safety and trust in the systems that are meant to protect us.

When this occurs, we end up feeling destabilised and emotionally dysregulated. The destabilisation can last for variable lengths of time and each person has to process and heal from their trauma in their own way.

Lewis Hamilton

I’ve never seen or met Lewis Hamilton in person, but through a screen, his presence feels larger than life. What has stood out to me is not just his talent but his character. He takes responsibility for his mistakes when things go wrong; he speaks with his fans with honesty and he seems to genuinely connect with them. He celebrates the achievements of other racers and always acknowledges not just his team, but the efforts of teams up and down the paddock.

Throughout his extraordinary career, he has consistently brought not only excellence to the track, but courage beyond it—speaking up even when it is unpopular and unwelcome. In an atmosphere where staying quiet seems like the safer path, Hamilton has used his voice to stand for much bigger causes than racing. That takes immense bravery and integrity. I don't get the sense that he would ever want a victory that he didn’t earn.

On that day in Abu Dhabi, Hamilton brought with him a lifetime of racing experience and a deep understanding of the rules—the same rules that every driver, team, broadcaster, and fan believed would govern the final, decisive race of an extraordinary season.

The Trauma of Injustice

In the final moments of the race, a rule wasn't just bent -- it was misapplied beyond recognition and the consequences were enormous.

The race director didn’t just make a tough call under pressure. He compromised the very foundation of fairness that the sport depends on.

The immediate confusion --- amongst drivers, pit walls, and broadcasters --- made it painfully obvious: what was unfolding was not right.

And yet, the race continued. Verstappen was declared the winner. There's no other word for his "victory" other than it was unfair and unjust. Hamilton was denied a win he should have rightfully earned.

That breach of fairness hit Hamilton the hardest, yet it reverberated far beyond him --- through anyone who believes in the integrity of competition - in sportsmanship.

When the systems we trust fail us --- publicly and without the any chance of repair --the emotional damage goes far beyond disappointment. It shakes us to our core. It is a psychological rupture and trauma.

The Trauma of Powerlessness

Not only was Hamilton's victory taken away from him before his eyes, he couldn't stop it from happening.

In psychology, trauma often occurs when someone is rendered powerless in the face of a wrong they can't stop --- and when the system that is supposed to protect them, fails to do so.

Toto Wolff, Mercedes Team Principal, did everything he could -- appealing to the stewards, challenging the race director, standing up for fairness --- but the momentum of the moment proved unstoppable.

And experiencing that helplessness in the face of clear wrongdoing is also a core element of trauma.

The Trauma of Being Invalidated

When Toto protested—calling attention to the clear violation—the race director didn’t respond with reflection or accountability. Instead, he dismissed Toto with a flippant, condescending remark: “Toto, it’s called a motor race. We went motor racing.”

That one sentence spoke volumes: it revealed the power imbalance that enabled Hamilton to be denied his victory of a world championship. Toto Wolff was dismissed when he tried to make things right.

As a fan, what came next felt surreal. The broadcast rolled on. History was rewritten in real time. And many of us were left sitting there, stunned, thinking: Did no one else see what we just saw?

That’s when trauma can deepen—when something that feels enormous to you is minimized by everyone else. When truth becomes fragmented. When you start questioning your own clarity.

That feeling—that crack between truth and perception—isn’t just painful. It’s destabilizing. When something undeniable is denied. When your outrage is met with indifference. When the world moves on, and you're left questioning your own reality.

why the word gaslighting has become so prevalent in our culture. It’s not just a personal experience anymore—it’s happening on global stages. In sport. In politics. In the very systems we’re supposed to trust. And when those systems distort reality in real time, the psychological impact can be enormous.

And that’s why the word gaslighting has become so charged in our cultural language. Because it’s not just happening in private. It’s happening out in the open—in sport, in politics, in the very institutions we’re taught to trust. When reality is rewritten in plain sight, it shakes something foundational. And that is traumatic.

And for me as a fan, what followed was equally disorienting. The broadcast moved on. The celebrations began. History was written. And so many of us were left wondering: did no one else see what we saw? That’s the moment when a trauma can deepen --- when what feels enormous to you is minimized by others, when truth becomes fragmented, when you’re forced to question your own clarity. That's why the term "gaslighting" has become so popularized right now in our society. Because it is happening all too often in broader contexts on the world's stages - in sport, in politics... where what we trust in our larger systems to be true just suddenly isn't true anymore and that is traumatic.

Most of us don’t have to worry about world championships—but I see this same dynamic play out in therapy all the time. A client knows what they felt, what they saw, what they experienced—and then a parent, partner, or boss tells them to move on, or worse, denies it altogether. That psychological dissonance doesn’t just fade. It lodges deep.

Sometimes it shows up in what seems like a small workplace conflict. A manager asks for a new version of a document, and the client is disproportionately upset. But when we dig into it, what emerges is powerful: it’s not about the document—it’s about feeling misperceived. She sees herself as competent and hard-working, and yet her manager’s reaction implies the opposite. That incongruence—between how we know ourselves and how we’re seen—can be deeply unsettling. It’s not just frustrating. It’s invalidating. And that’s where the trauma lives.

Most of us don’t have to worry about world championships—but I see this same dynamic play out in therapy every week. A client knows what they experienced—what they felt in their body, what they saw with their own eyes—and yet a parent, a partner, or a manager tells them to move on, or worse, insists it didn’t happen that way. That kind of invalidation doesn’t just sting. It scrambles your sense of reality. It buries itself deep.

Sometimes it shows up at work. A client feels gutted after a seemingly minor interaction with their manager—being asked to redo something or clarify a task. But when we explore it, it’s never just about the assignment. It’s about feeling unseen. Misunderstood. Her identity as a thoughtful, capable employee gets flipped on its head, and suddenly she’s being viewed as careless or inadequate. That gap—between how we see ourselves and how we’re seen—can be unbearable. It creates a kind of quiet panic. And when there’s no space to name it or correct it, it festers.

The same thing happens in relationships. A client recalls a moment during an argument when they felt dismissed—cut off, eye rolled, or told they were being “too sensitive.” To their partner, it was nothing. But to them, it cracked something open. Because deep down, they don’t just want to be right—they want to be known. And when someone you love denies your emotional experience, it’s not just frustrating—it’s lonely. It tells you: your truth isn’t safe here.

That’s the deeper layer of trauma we’re talking about. It’s not the surface event—it’s the fracture in meaning. It’s when what you know to be real is treated like it doesn’t matter. That’s what leaves people stuck. And that’s what so many of us saw in Abu Dhabi.

Let me know if you want to add a transition back into the sport context or expand on the idea of “being seen” in performance-driven cultures. You're exploring this brilliantly.

The Trauma of Hypocrisy

Experiencing someone else's hypocrisy is a powerful and often overlooked source of trauma—and one I see many clients struggle to untangle in therapy. It’s where people frequently get emotionally stuck.

Even when healing seems to be underway, they find themselves looping back to the same realisation: "If the roles were reversed, this would never be acceptable to them" or "I would never have treated them with the same disregard they showed me."

This dynamic shows up everywhere—between siblings, in romantic relationships, with parents, friends, even coworkers. What hurts isn’t just the event itself—it’s the awareness that the other person is unwilling to live by the very standards they demand. That discrepancy can shake someone’s core sense of fairness, and it’s often what reopens the wound.

That kind of hypocrisy isn’t just frustrating—it’s destabilizing. It shakes our sense of logic and it makes us feel crazy for expecting consistency.

Imagine this: there was a sit down with Christian Horner before the race and the stewards told him:“Max will lead the majority of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. But in the final laps, the race director will enforce Rule X in a way that’s never been done before, will not be done again, and it will be widely accepted as a misapplication. It will allow Hamilton to overtake Max on the last lap and win the championship. The rule will later be clarified, the director dismissed for deviating from the rule, and his interpretation will be acknowledged as a major mistake. Sound fair?”

There is NO version of reality in which Horner would’ve agreed to that scenario.

No competitor would.

And yet, when the roles were reversed, Hamilton was expected to accept the result while others celebrated it as a thrilling end to the season --- that Max "deserved" the win!

What made the result more disheartening was how many people seemed willing to accept the outcome. If you’d asked Red Bull fans before the race whether they’d want Max to win only under fair circumstances, I’d lay in front of a train that the answer would’ve been a resounding yes—only if it was fair.

So then, what happened when Verstappen won through chaos and a broken rulebook?

People who would’ve sworn they valued fairness over favoritism were suddenly fine with an unfair and unjust win—because it benefited the team they supported.

The Disillusionment as the Aftermath the Trauma That We Are Left to Sit With That Has No Resolution after Trauma

Let’s be clear: as fans, we understand that bad calls are part of sports. They’re frustrating, but they happen—an official misses a detail, makes a judgment call under pressure, and we move on.

But what happened in Abu Dhabi was not that. It wasn’t a marginal or subjective call, like debating who last touched a ball before it went out of bounds.

It was an unprecedented, clear misapplication of a written rule— challenged in real time.

There was established precedent: in similar racing situations, the rule had been applied correctly. The deviation in Abu Dhabi was glaring. The backlash later led to the race director’s dismissal.

Since that day, the rule in question has never been applied the same way again. There have been races with similar circumstances and the rule has been applied as it should have been - as it was expected to have been on that day in 2021. That, in itself, says everything.

At those times, Hamilton has to sit with the pain and disappointment that "if only they had applied the rules like this in Abu Dhabi..." How terrible is that?

And yet, even now, in 2025, the result still stands. How is this even possible?

How has a misapplied rule, acknowledged as such, still determined the outcome of a critical race in recent F1 history, years later?

If you’d asked Red Bull fans before the race whether they’d want Max to win only if it was fair, most would’ve said yes. And yet, when he won through confusion and a broken rulebook, fairness no longer seemed to matter.

As a therapist, I know this phenomenon well. We have decades of psychological research showing how easily people will go along with actions they know are wrong—especially when authority permits it, or when it serves their interests. Sometimes, all it takes is the power and permission to do it.

The famous studies by Milgram, Zimbardo, Asch, and others show how quickly people will override their values under social pressure or when given permission by a system. It’s deeply unsettling—and yet undeniably human.

That’s why this moment in sport struck such a nerve. It wasn’t just about who won or lost. It was about how people responded to clear injustice. When we excuse wrongdoing simply because it benefits us, we erode the principles that hold our communities—and our sports—together.

If you want a crash course in how humans justify unethical behavior, go read about the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971), the Milgram Obedience Study (1963), the Asch Conformity Experiments (1950s), or the Bystander Effect. These studies reveal just how susceptible we are to compromising our values in the face of power, pressure, or groupthink.

That’s the hypocrisy and invalidation that leads to disillusionment. And that’s part of what made the outcome in Abu Dhabi not just controversial—but, for many, traumatic.

Working with couples, families, siblings dynamics... I am always looking to understand situations from all perspectives and believe that compounded the trauma race day as well.

That’s what made it even harder to swallow: how many people were willing to accept the outcome because it aligned with what they wanted, not because it was right.

This happens to many of us ....

Bigger than Racing

It’s important to understand that trauma isn’t always about the event itself—it’s about our internal experience of the event --- how our nervous system experiences the event, how the event made us feel.

This is incredibly critical to appreciate.

What this means is that we can have a deeply emotional or even traumatic response to something, even if others around us think we're overreacting. One person might experience a moment as profoundly destabilising, while someone else sees it as no big deal. That doesn’t make the first person’s reaction any less valid. A traumatic response can feel intense, even if others view it as disproportionate.

In fact, that disconnect—that sense that what feels huge to us is being dismissed or minimised by others—can actually make the trauma worse.

A Therapist Becomes the Case Study

As I was watching this unfold, I felt stunned. As a therapist, I’m trained to help people understand their emotional reactions—to spot when something current taps into something deeper. And in that moment, I realized: I was experiencing something much more visceral than sports frustration. So I decided to turn my lens inward and use myself as the case study.

When clients come to me after a distressing event, part of the therapeutic process is helping them untangle: What is my reaction to the event itself? What does it represent or trigger from earlier in my life? What core beliefs or values does it hit? This is the kind of reflection that helps us integrate experiences, rather than carry them as unresolved trauma.

Here’s what I uncovered in myself:

• A deep urge to protect and fight for Hamilton—even though I don’t know him.

• A visceral need to stand up for what I saw as right versus wrong.

• Rage toward a person in power who I felt lacked the capacity for complexity, empathy, or flexibility.

• And finally, a deeper fury at the broader systems that allow a single person to wield that kind of unchecked authority while the rest of us are left powerless.

All of these responses were emotionally valid in the moment—but what they revealed was something older, something stored in my nervous system. A part of me that still holds memories of being powerless in the face of obvious wrongs. That’s what this moment activated in me—not just grief for Hamilton, but something unresolved within myself.

When I look at it through that lens, my strong emotional reaction makes perfect sense. And I also know this is exactly how trauma can resurface: not because we’re being irrational, but because something in the present echoes something deeply embedded in our past.

Why It Stuck With So Many of Us

That’s the thing about trauma. It doesn’t always come from catastrophic events. Sometimes it comes from public betrayals of fairness—events that disorient us, that shake our belief in the systems we trust.

And in the days and weeks that followed, the pain deepened not only because of what happened—but because of how it was dismissed.

Sport as a Mirror of Society

For those who dismiss this as just racing, I’d argue the opposite. Sport has always mirrored our larger world. And what played out on that track in Abu Dhabi felt eerily familiar.

It mirrored what we see in politics, workplaces, and relationships: power being abused, systems failing to self-correct, people justifying injustice because it benefits them, and others too exhausted or powerless to fight back.

We’re seeing this play out in democracies around the world—where norms are broken, institutions are undermined, and the rules are bent or rewritten outright. And yet people cheer, as long as their side wins.

The emotional fallout from Abu Dhabi reminded me just how fragile fairness is—and how quickly it can be discarded when it becomes inconvenient.

Here’s what I uncovered in myself.

As a fan, I was stunned. The injustice was so clear, so blatant, and yet so many people seemed willing move on, excuse it, or even celebrate it.

I felt traumatised and as a therapist, I felt surprised by my own strong response and asked myself what is this really about?

This is what I do for my clients when they come to see me. I help support them to understand what a traumatic event means for them and how to work through these events which can be a complicated process but for this article, I will walk you through a very shortened version of my thoughts:

My first thought was about Lewis Hamilton—a man I don’t know, but in that moment, I imagined what he might be feeling. All the work he’s put in --- everything he’s devoted his life to. Someone who competes with integrity, who would never cheat, who gives everything to the sport. And there he was, having his hard-fought, legitimately earned victory taken away by one man—one small-thinking, rigid, unbending official with far too much power who was blatantly wrong. I felt this wave of rage --- it was visceral --- throughout my entire body. I wanted to fight back, to somehow be in Abu Dhabi and do something. I was furious—not just at the decision, but at every system that enables people to hold unchecked power, especially when they’re not self-aware or intelligent enough to admit when they’re wrong.

Think how quickly our trauma response kicks in and gives us so much information. To distill all that, I was instantly feeling:

(1) a deep urge to protect and fight for Hamilton—even though I don’t know him;

(2) a visceral need to stand up for what I saw as right versus wrong;

(3) frustration toward a man who, in my view, held far too much power for someone so rigid, so stubborn, and so seemingly unequipped for complex decision-making or empathy;

and (4) anger at the broader systems that allow a single individual to wield unchecked authority while the rest of us are left powerless.

This is just the tip of the iceberg but what all of these emotions speak to are one of my core values which is justice and a traumatic feeling from my childhood was being powerless in the face of seeing something that I felt was blatantly and obviously wrong.

So it isn't surprising that watching Hamilton be denied his rightfully earned victory tapped into a place inside of me that felt traumatic on his behalf and inside of myself as well. Once I understand that Hamilton's loss at Abu Dhabi tapped into larger traumatic feelings I still hold somewhere in my nervous system, does it make easier to live with the results? Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't is my honest answer.

Then is that how we deal with trauma? Do we try to understand how events in the present tap into or relate to past traumas that may be unresolved from our past or that our bodies may still hold inside of themselves in our neurobiology?

Applies to Our Broader World Context

That is definitely what a significant amount of research shows us is effective in order to process our traumas but that can be for a different article.

But here’s the larger point: what happened in Abu Dhabi wasn’t just about racing. It was about injustice—about how we respond when something is clearly wrong, and what we’re willing to overlook when the outcome serves us.

I believe sport matters. We can’t dismiss it with a casual “whatever, it’s just sports,” because it’s not. A global sport like Formula 1 draws millions of viewers and moves billions of dollars so why not show that it is a sport that values fairness above everything else.

We’re watching this dynamic play out on an even more dangerous scale in the world around us: political leaders ignoring the rules, dismantling institutions, undermining democracy—and people going along with it, not because it’s right, but because it serves their side. If the roles were reversed, there would be outrage. And yet, silence.

So it speaks to values. Do we only care about fairness when it serves us? Or are we willing to defend it, even when it doesn’t?

Because if we don’t hold the line—in sport, in leadership, in life—we risk losing the very principles that hold it all together.

Hamilton honestly reflected the wound from that moment is something he will carry but he also said, "it is possible to grow from it - to find strength within it - to hold onto your core values even when the world seems indifferent to them".

That kind of inner strength—holding firm to who you are-- when the very system you have devoted your entire life to just turned its back on you --- is not just rare, it's extraordinary.

If that doesn't inspire you to carry the torch forward with your own integrity, I don't know what will.

RAFTER

Of course, athletes don't regularly offer up when they disagree with missed called or erroneous calls by the officiating - While this is a tangent, it makes me think of a former professional Australian tennis player, Patrick Rafter, who I still think of to this day who played with great integrity on the court. I remember he would actually correct calls that favored his opponent and I remember being in awe and disbelief he would do this. I had such admiration for him as an athlete and a person. (I have since researched what other athletes have done this and it is worth looking up for yourself because there have been others and the stories are inspirational).