The debacle of the 2021 Abu Dhabi finale will forever stay in the minds of many F1 fans. The fateful night turned out to be a harbinger of bad luck for Lewis Hamilton. Not only did the Briton miss out on the elusive 8th world championship title, but has also stayed non-competitive for one and a half years since. With the passage of time, one would expect him to get over it, but it turns out he hasn’t. In fact, he has equated the loss to his first love and first heartbreak.

Hamilton dated British model Danielle Lloyd in 2002. Back then, he was just a young F3 driver. The relationship lasted for just six months, but Danielle admitted that it was love at first sight. The pair remained good friends after the split. In fact, Hamilton was in attendance during the 2004 pageant when Lloyd was crowned Miss England.

Lewis Hamilton reveals the scar the 2021 Abu Dhabi finale left on his psyche

During last week’s Azerbaijan GP, Hamilton appeared for an interview with ESPN. There, he talked about the heartbreak of 2021, where he missed out on his 8th world title owing to an erroneous call by race director Michael Masi.

“Ultimately that feeling never really truly leaves you,” he told. “It’s like when you think about your first love, it will always be that first love and first heartbreak.”

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“Abu Dhabi, the scar is there and there will always be that memory. Even though I reprogrammed my mind, I think it still took me the whole year to really push through it because we were straight back into work,” he added. “It wasn’t a quick thing.”

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The incident wasn’t just a depressing one for him, but also for the entire team, Mercedes. That was despite the fact that they had continued on their unbeaten streak of constructors’ championship. Toto Wolff passed some of the blame for what happened over to the then FIA president and legendary former Ferrari team principal, Jean Todt.

Toto Wolff blames Jean Todt for not intervening

In a recent interview on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Hamilton’s then-teammate, Valtteri Bottas revealed how gloomy the scenes were in Brackley following the fateful night in Abu Dhabi. The Finn admitted that the experience was painful even for him. Team boss Toto Wolff too recently recalled his share of memories from then.

Wolff said, “For us it was a catastrophic set of circumstances, but it was the making of one man — there is no big conspiracy theory behind it.”

“Would I have wished that Jean Todt got involved rather than being filming for his documentary? Yes. At least to tell the stewards to look at it the right way.”

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The team has failed to taste much success after the 2021 finale. Mercedes saw their streak of 8 consecutive constructors’ championship break last year. The current season isn’t going too well either.