Emmo Jr. picks his side: 2021 Abu Dhabi turned him into a Verstappen fan
Emerson Fittipaldi Jr. has joined the long list of people whose F1 origin story hinges on a single, chaotic evening in Abu Dhabi. The son of the two-time world champion says the 2021 title decider flipped his allegiance from Lewis Hamilton to Max Verstappen — and he’s never looked back.
Speaking to Motorsport.com’s Brazilian edition, the 18-year-old explained that he’d admired Hamilton through Mercedes’ dominant years, but the finale that pitted a tied-at-369.5-points Verstappen and Hamilton for all the marbles was the moment his preference changed. “I liked Max from the start,” he said, “but in 2021, when he had a very competitive car to win, it was cool to watch the fight… In Abu Dhabi, I was hoping Max would win. That was the moment my preference changed.”
You don’t need a refresher, but it’s impossible to separate his story from that night: Lap 53, Nicholas Latifi in the wall, Safety Car deployed. Hamilton stayed out; Verstappen dived into the pits for fresh tyres. Then came the call that still gets dissected in pubs and paddock corridors — race control fast-tracked the restart procedure, waved through only the five lapped cars between the title rivals, and produced a one-lap shootout. Verstappen, on much fresher rubber, did the rest.
It was the sport’s great Rorschach test. For some, an outrage; for others, the breath of fresh air after years of silver dominance. For a young driver with a famous surname, it was the hook. And in 2025, with Verstappen a multiple world champion and Hamilton still the seven-time standard, it remains the cultural pivot point for a generation who grew up watching those two carve up the calendar.
Fittipaldi Jr. is carving his own path too. The Brazilian is competing in Eurocup-3 and, as he outlined, has a move to Formula 2 pencilled in for 2026. He talks like a student of the game, the kind who’ll happily admit that a TV moment shaped his taste. That’s not a bad thing; it’s honest — and it tracks with a paddock full of mechanics, engineers and young guns who can tell you exactly where they were when the Safety Car lights went out in Yas Marina.
In a sport that runs on lineage and loyalties, it’s fitting that a Fittipaldi’s fandom was forged in the most polarising lap of modern F1. Whatever you think of how that race was handled, it’s still making fans — and maybe, in a few years, sending one of them to the grid.
