Years after Lewis retires, he does an interview about his career achievements and whatnot. The host asks him if he has any regrets. He kind of freezes for a moment but laughs it off and says everybody does, but that he doesn't have any major regrets about his career and how everything panned out.
Lewis hasn't kept up with George much these days. In the years after Lewis retired, they slowly stopped connecting as much, and eventually stopped connecting at all.
Later, Lewis is thinking to himself because he knows that he does actually have a regret. He knows that it's stupid because it had been worked out so long ago now, over a decade ago. George had forgiven him, they'd forgiven each other. But, secretly, if there was one thing Lewis was able to change about his career, it would be how he initially reacted when him and George had contact during Qatar 2023.
Sure, he could regret everything that led up to the reaction, regret Nico, regret what happened between them, but he doesn't. He feels sad that things between him and Nico panned out that way, but he doesn't regret his career in those moments, he doesn't regret doing what he had to to prove himself as a black racer.
He doesn't like that the contact between himself and George (which Lewis had admittedly been at fault for) caused him to lash out and blame others, blame George, for his own mistakes.
He thinks about Qatar 2023 more often than he should, even years on. He isn't sure that he would change the contact, he isn't sure that he wouldn't fight George as hard on track, but he is sure that he would change his reaction to the contact and his DNF. He wouldn't be as rash next time, he thinks, hopes.
Lewis goes to bed that night, and wakes up spinning. He thinks he's dreaming at first. He's in his spinning Mercedes W14. The contact with George has already happened. The emotions all come flooding back. He does the same thing that he did the first time, if not worse.
He wakes up again, earlier this time, October 8th, 2023. It's early in the morning, he's in an expensive hotel bed, 20 years younger than he was when he left the interview that morning. It's race day in Qatar, and it's going to be race day in Qatar until Lewis gets this right.