Drive To Spice Up The Ratings
He's taking the Michael..
Well. Safe to say absolutely nobody saw that coming. In a season as dramatic and tense as 2021 it was almost fitting that the championship was decided on the last lap of the last race. It was a crazy end to one of the wildest and most controversial seasons F1 has ever seen.
How did we get here?
The main talking point this season has been the decision making by race director Michael Masi and the stewarding team. Both Red Bull and Mercedes have on several occasions appealed directly to Masi, whether that be over the radio during the race or via a more formal process afterwards to overturn decisions they aren't happy with. While this is the nature of the sport and perhaps inevitable when you have two teams at the very top of their games seperated by fractions of a second, the way Masi has gone about bringing order to the proceedings has not always been a stellar example of leadership.
Verstappen runs Hamilton wide in Brasil. The decision not to penalise Max led to vocal complaints from several drivers at the breifing in Qatar, as well as complaints from Red Bull when Max was penalised for the same thing in Saudi Arabia.
For me Masi's decision making has been shown to be flawed. The first properly big call was when he cut a deal with Red Bull in Saudi Arabia over Max's starting position following a red flag. Max had overtaken Lewis with all four wheels off the track and hadn't handed the position back before the race was stopped due to incidents at the back of the pack. As the cars parked in the pit lane he was heard on the radio to Red Bull offering them a 2 place penalty, demoting Max to third for the restart. My issue with this is that as the race director he should not be making deals with any team. His authority is absolute and he's paid to make decisions, not to cut bargains with teams to avoid any drama that might arise should he make a decision they aren't happy with. Masi himself said this is a normal process during the race but for me it cast a lot of doubt on his ability to effectively make decisions. Perhaps the publication of team radios needs to be re-considered for certain conversations.
Hamilton follows the safety car in the closing laps of the Abu Dhabi GP.
Of course the biggest call of the season though happened last night. With Lewis 13 seconds out in front and showing no signs of being caught Nicholas Latifi lost the back end through Turn 14 and struck the barrier, bringing out the safety car to recover his stranded Williams. Here's where the controversy really begins.
At first, Masi decided not to allow the lapped cars behind the safety car to unlap themselves; this is an unusual practice as normally they only stop this happening during a wet race. After several vocal appeals from Red Bull Masi then allowed the lapped cars to unlap themselves, but only the cars between Max and Lewis; by the rules every lapped car should have been allowed to unlap themselves, which probably would have meant the race ending under the safety car. The rules go on to say that the safety car can only return to the pits on the lap after the lapped cars pass by. This would effectively have meant the race ending under safety car conditions but Masi chose to ignore this and permit the safety car to return early, allowing one final lap of racing because he decided that the race should finish under racing conditions regardless of what the rules say. The rest is history.
Has Masi lost the respect of the drivers?
It's hard not to get a sense that F1's owners, Liberty Media, and Masi are more concerned with producing blockbuster moments for the Netflix show Drive To Survive than they are with actually enforcing the rules as they're written. F1 has definitely gotten more exciting since they got involved but I'm really not convinced this is a good thing: F1 is a sport, not a reality show. By the letter of F1's own rulebook the rules simply weren't followed last night which is a shame as it allows decisions and winners to be questioned; perhaps an intended result to keep people talking as we all know clicks equal money.
Several drivers have been critical of Masi for particular incidents over the last few years, including Lewis Hamilton (although not for last night), two time champion Fernando Alonso, Lando Norris and George Russell (both for last night). Masi also came in for heavy criticism from a few drivers over the botched restart procedure at the 2020 Tuscan GP.
The 2020 Tuscan GP restart was a disaster. Masi fiercely denied blame although many drivers were unhappy with his decision making with regards to the safety car.
Ultimately no amount of appealing by Mercedes will change the result. Over the course of the season Max has been absolutely incredible and whether he or Lewis walked out of Yas Marina last night as champion, very few people would say that neither man deserved it. It's a real shame that the whole thing now becomes the focus of endless arguements and potentially even a court case should Mercedes wish it to go that far, although I doubt they will. Ultimately though the result feels manufactured. Christian Horner begging on the radio for "just one lap" and then miraculously being given it a few seconds later does little to get rid of the feeling that the end of the race was a farce.
The sad fact is that arguments are flying back and forth exactly because of Michael Masi. F1 needs a very firm hand on the tiller to put huge stars like Hamilton and Verstappen in their place, and to silence the almost constant arguing from Horner and Wolff and I simply don't feel Masi is up to the job. He's now had three seasons as the F1 race director and it feels like the sport has taken a step backward during his tenure. The drama may have ratcheted up but the quality of the decision making by the man in charge has taken a noticeable decline. The debate over this race will rage long into the winter and it'll very likely still be a talking point at the start of next season. That simply shouldn't happen but it has and it's the fault of one man. Sorry Michael, but it's time to go.
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