THE FALLOUT
George Russell: “THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE !!!! Max is an absolutely fantastic driver who has had an incredible season and I have nothing but huge respect for him, but what just happened is absolutely unacceptable. I cannot believe what we’ve just seen.”
Croft: “We knew there was going to be a fallout. We knew Michael Masi had made a mistake. Obviously, there was going to be an awful lot talked about and said. But that moment when Max crosses the line… you can’t make reference to the controversy.
“Because as unpalatable it might be to a lot of fans of Lewis Hamilton, Max wasn’t an undeserving world champion. He won more races. It wasn’t his fault that Michael Masi made the errors that he did.
Brundle: “We saw how well Lewis and his dad handled it straight after the disappointment in Abu Dhabi and I can understand why he went on the missing list for a while on social media.
“I don’t think there’s an asterisk against Max’s Championship. The C’Ship was over 22 races, it was really unfortunate what happened in the end. It was really sad. It upset a lot of people, not just Lewis fans.
“Mistakes were made on the day, I don’t see malice. We’re in a new situation with F1, there’s a lot of moving parts to that story, it’s very
complex how that happened.
“I wished it hadn’t had happened for Formula One and for Michael. He learned under Charlie [Whiting, former race director]. He fundamentally did a good job under 50 circumstances. I wished we didn’t find ourselves in this position because ideally you need somebody who’s feared and revered in equal measure controlling a super competitive group of drivers and team managers. It’s too big a job for one person.”
Hill: “Lewis has been very stoic in 2022. I know it must have been unbelievably hard to swallow what happened last year in Abu Dhabi. But he’s come back and he’s got on us with his job. Given what happened, I think he’s been brilliant quite frankly.”
The governing body added that “human error” was the basis behind why only five of the eight lapped cars were allowed to pass the safety car. There would now be two race directors overseeing the season, as opposed to one. The wildly excessive negotiating from teams to race control over the airwaves – such a feature of the 2021 campaign – was discontinued.
Most conclusively though, there was no basis for the race result and Verstappen’s championship to change hands. The chapter is closed.
But as F1 returns to Abu Dhabi this year, nearly 12 months on from the sport’s most dramatic moment watched worldwide by an estimated 108.7 million people and with clips from the stands of Verstappen’s last-lap overtake reǀstering over a million views, questions surrounding the FIA’s management of races continue to linger.
Pierre Gasly’s close-shave in Japan with a tractor was the most severe. The drawn-out cost-cap saga was a terrible look for the sport – with Verstappen’s title still technically in danger 10 months on from crossing the line first in Abu Dhabi. For all the excitement and pulsation of that finale, the sporting product remains under fire. Formula 1 has a long way to go yet as it returns to Yas Marina: home to the sport’s most memorable spectacle. And scandal.
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