Just taken this quote off a report on the BBC website. Masi commenting on unlapping in Germany 2020. I think this might form part of Mercedes’ appeal. In 2020, there was a safety-car period during the Eifel Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. Both Hamilton and Verstappen complained it had been unnecessarily long. Masi was asked about this after the race. He said: "There's a requirement in the sporting regulations to wave all the lapped cars past." So, he seems to have changed his mind on the meaning of the relevant rule over the last year - he followed one course of action with regards to lapped cars in Germany last year, and another in Abu Dhabi.
I don't think there's much doubt that Masi will be gone before next season. The FIA will simply hang him out to dry. I feel a bit sorry for him TBH, he hasn't been great but he shouldn't take all the heat.
I don't. He panicked and made a daft decision. If he'd just allowed the lapped cars to stay in position, Max would likely have caught Lewis anyhow (or maybe not) and all this fuss would be moot.
I have to say that having considered this for a bit longer that I'm convinced it's absolute bollocks and Mercedes have a really strong case here. I mean, they've literally made up a rule to decide the outcome. The more I think about it I can't see how Max can be seen as the legitimate champion. I said I didn't want results changed after the fact (and I still don't really) but this is an utter embarrassment to the sport frankly. This isn't just a controversial decision or a difference of opinion; a fundamental part of the regulations were ignored without which he wouldn't have won the race. As someone else alludes to, they literally didn't give the courtesy of 'racing' to anyone but Max I've been trying to think of a football equivalent and reckon it'd be like a team being 3-0 up in the latter stages when their keeper gets injured. The ref decides that this merits a penalty to the opposition and announces at the same time that the next goal wins.
The issue with the protest is that the FIA regs for just about every damned thing state "if the clerk of the course decides" or some variation thereof. In regulation 48.12 alone, which concerns cars unlapping themselves, it appears three times. That so much is left to the judgement of the race director wasn't given heavy consideration for a long time because i) we didn't have such a wild edge case, and ii) Charlie Whiting was extraordinarily good at his job.
Apparently Mercedes can only go as far as the FIA court of appeal and can't go to CAS. Because the rules say only the FIA can rule on F1 matters. This gets more shady by the day. FIX!
The way the final race ended sucked and will understandably be what most remember from what had been the best contest in years, but c'mon now...no, it didn't happen because someone with the FIA made a bet or the race and they rigged it. That's beyond silly. Throwing in absurd conspiracy theories doesn't exactly bolster the case. Masi was faced with three possibilities (end the race under yellow despite the track being cleared/have none of the lapped traffic clear/have the relevant parts of the lapped traffic clear) and chose the one that left it in the hands of the drivers. There's absolutely a good argument that it was the wrong choice, but that's all it was.
As I've said, Masi panicked under pressure (in a way that Charlie Whiting wouldn't). The right decision would have been to leave the lapped cars where they were - it still would have been hugely exciting, and Max still would have had an opportunity to catch Lewis on that lap. More pertinently, it would also have been squarely within the rules (be it unlucky for Lewis that there was a SC when there was, but them's the breaks).
By the way, it looks like Mercedes are going to drop the appeal, influenced by Lewis to do so. He goes up in my estimation every day, that guy.
Fair play to him if that's the case. I guess Lewis nearly as much as Max doesn't want this dragging out into next year. They just need to switch off and have a well deserved break before slugging it out again in a few months time. And Lewis wouldn't get any sort of pleasure or joy out of winning the Championship in the unlikely event the result got overturned.
I'm seeing signs of peace between Max and Lewis now as well. Obviously they need to keep that rivalry intense but I think it's important that they respect each other at the same time. I think Max in particular has been a bit hot headed at times - he didn't check Lewis was ok after nearly taking his head off at Monza for example. That's the sort of incident where the rivalry needs to be put aside and show concern for your fellow driver. Leave the bickering and bad feeling to the management.
Am I wrong in thinking the rules and their implementation that turn an 11+ second lead with 5 laps to run into a loss are inherently unfair?
No, which is why they should have red flagged the race so it would be an even playing field for the last few laps.
So, team principals have now been banned from talking to the race director during a race from next season. Shame, that was entertaining to listen to.
With a strict reading (ie, taking out the 2000 "it's the clerk's call" provisos) the only thing that the regulations should truly lead to is a finish under yellow, with the final lap consumed by cars unlapping themselves. The wording is slightly vague, but the only reason cars should be prevented from unlapping is "conditions", with the surrounding clauses making it fairly clear that it refers to track conditions that render unlapping unsafe: namely, heavy rain or continuing cleanup (which almost caused problems last year when cars were waved through while workers were still around the tarmac). But dear god, if this was an unsatisfying ending, "the regs state that the backmarkers had to unlap so that we could restart in the proper order, but we were too busy waving them through to actually restart" would have been the pinnacle of absurdity, even if that seems to be the closest reading of the rules.
Taking the macro view, I think that the stewards and Masi made a lot of very questionable decisions this year, and this was absolutely a very questionable decision. But I do have some sympathy for him because you literally could not design a more difficult choice for the race director. Had he been more decisive at the start of the caution, this likely doesn't become such a morass, but he was also happened the sort of choice that qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment under the Geneva Conventions.
He could have made life much simpler had he red flagged the race. You said there was no reason to issue a red flag but I disagree. He could have red flagged it on safety grounds. The car has crashed in a dangerous area. There was a fair amount of debris. There's plenty of scope there to justify a red flag. And then we could have had a thrilling last few laps.
But you are effectively arguing against what you have said previous, in lambasting Masi for letting the context of the race and championship influence his decision-making. The rules on red-flagging are actually far more clearly spelled out: it requires that the race director believes that the track cannot be safely traversed even behind a safety car. Which wasn't the case here.
