Mercedes waiting for heads to roll after farce
One month on from one of the most controversial conclusions to a Formula One season, the world is still waiting for answers. Just what went down in those frantic, final laps in Abu Dhabi? Did Michael Masi, the race director, really adopt “a freestyle reading of the rules”, which left Lewis Hamilton like “a sitting duck” in the season’s finale, as alleged by Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff?
Or did the Brackley team make a “tactical error” at the end of the race, the argument put forward at the time by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, who maintains the stewards were right to reject their rival’s protests in the aftermath of Max Verstappen’s last-lap victory that followed the withdrawal of a safety car.
The FIA and its new president, Mohammed ben Sulayem, need to get a grip on things — and fast. Mercedes and Hamilton, their seventime world champion, are still incensed by what happened and there is no guarantee the latter will return this year.
Hamilton has remained tightlipped, with the outcome of the FIA’S promised investigation — which formally began last week and is expected to be completed in time for the next World Motor Sport Council meeting on February 3 — understood to be crucial to his decision. But what does Hamilton want? What do Mercedes want? We know they are “disillusioned” because Wolff told us so when he announced Mercedes’s decision to drop their appeal in exchange for a “robust” investigation. We know they want changes. But what are those changes? What will keep Hamilton in the sport?
Mercedes’ view is that the ball is firmly in the FIA’S court and it is incumbent on the governing body to deliver as promised. But you would have to imagine that at the very least they will want the FIA to admit errors were made at the end of the Abu Dhabi race, when Masi first allowed
only some of the lapped cars in between the leaders to unlap themselves, and then restarted the race a lap earlier than many felt it ought to have been.
This will be hugely tricky for them. If the FIA inquiry finds against its stewards in Abu Dhabi, there might be public calls for the result to be overturned. Or for an asterisk to be placed next to Verstappen’s name in the history books (which would be unfair on the Dutchman, who did nothing wrong himself).
Peter Bayer, the FIA’S secretary general of motor sport, is interviewing all those involved, including Masi. Wolff has already said one of the reasons Mercedes dropped their appeal was they did not believe the FIA’S International Court of Appeal would have found against its own race director. “The FIA can’t mark their own homework,” he said.
There has been much speculation that Mercedes agreed a quid pro quo with the FIA in the aftermath of Abu
Dhabi, agreeing to drop their appeal as long as Masi and Nikolas
Tombazis, the FIA’S head of singleseater technical matters, were forced to walk the plank.
You would have to imagine Masi is toast. Wolff himself implied Masi’s departure was inevitable when he told the media, in his final press conference before Christmas, that it was “not only a decision to change the race director”. The tricky thing is there is not an obvious replacement. — Telegraph Group UK