FIA admit Michael Masi’s job under threat after Abu Dhabi Grand Prix farce

01/29/2022

The FIA have admitted Michael Masi’s role as race director is under threat, following the controversies of last season’s Formula 1 finale at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The world championship looked set to go to Lewis Hamilton for a record eighth time after he held a comfortable leading heading into the final six laps.

However, chaos struck after the lowly Nicholas Latifi crashed resulting in the deployment of the safety car late on.

The controversy then came as Masi ordered a number of lapped cars between leader Hamilton, and his title rival in second place Max Verstappen to take over the safety car to all but wipe the Englishman’s once unassailable lead.

This meant both Hamilton and Verstappen were left to play out a one lap shootout in order to decide the title, which the latter prevailed thanks to a much fresher set of tyres.

The controversy surrounding Masi’s decision to allow the lapped cars past sparked outrage in the Mercedes camp, and the wider Formula 1 world.

Mercedes did lodge two appeals against the result which were subsequently both unsuccessful, and then agreed to withdraw a third after the FIA revealed that there would be a ‘robust’ review in the finish.

Reports also suggested that the Constructors’ champions had offered to drop their appeal in exchange for the sacking of Masi but this has since been denied.

The governing body announced this month that a detailed investigation into the Abu Dhabi debacle would be taking place, with the newly appointed FIA's head of F1 Peter Bayer in charge.

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Since the investigation Bayer has confirmed to Australian journalist Gerhard Kuntschick that Masi’s job could well be under threat.

He said: “Michael did a super job in many ways. We told him that. But also that there is a possibility there could be a new race director."

Bayer went on to add that a potential plan for the 2022 campaign could be to split the roles of the race director between a team.

He went on: “[We are looking at] dividing the various tasks of the race director, who is also sports director, safety and track delegate.

"That was simply too much. These roles are divided between several people. This reduces the burden on the race director."

Masi found himself subject to plenty of scrutiny over the team radios from Mercedes principal Toto Wolff, and Red Bull boss Christian Horner throughout the 2021 season.

As a result, in an attempt to stop this Bayer revealed that for the new campaign the FIA will introduce a buffer for team requests, before they reach the FIA director.

He commented: “The team managers will still be able to [talk to the race director]- they have to be able to ask questions.

"We want to build in a buffer with an employee who accepts these requests.

"In the future, the race director will be able to concentrate on his task and will no longer be distracted."

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