Former FIA race director Michael Masi acted in “good faith” but made a “human error” during the late Safety Car period at last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
That is among the main takeaways the governing body has announced after a report into the controversial ending at last year’s Formula 1 season finale was released to the World Motor Sport Council on Saturday.
The world championship duel between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen came down to a one-lap shootout around Yas Marina, as a crash for Nicholas Latifi called for the race to be neutralised.
But in the process of preparing for a restart, however, “human error lead to the fact that not all cars were allowed to un-lap themselves” and Masi “called the Safety Car back into the pit lane without it having completed an additional lap as required by the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations (Article 48.12)”, the report notes.
The FIA though defending his actions with a number of arguments:
- It was apparent from the analysis that there could be different interpretations of Article 48.12 and Article 48.13 of the Formula 1 Sporting Regulations, and that this likely contributed to the applied procedure.
- It was also considered that the decisions regarding the Safety Car at the end of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix likely took into account previous discussions that made clear the Formula 1 stakeholders (FIA, Formula 1, Teams and Drivers) preference to end races under green flag racing conditions, rather than behind a Safety Car, when safe to do so.
As a result: “In combination with the objective to finish under green flag racing conditions applied throughout the 2021 season, the report finds that the Race Director (Masi) was acting in good faith and to the best of his knowledge given the difficult circumstances.
“Particularly acknowledging the significant time constraints for decisions to be made and the immense pressure being applied by the teams.”
The FIA has since sought to avoid a repeat of what took place by implementing a series of new measures.
First was the removal of Masi as Race Director, with the belief largely being that his position was untenable after what took place.
A new ‘VAR-style’ remote Race Control has also been introduced to assist the Race Director, while greater limits on communication with the Race Director have also been imposed on teams.
New software has been created to automate the process of unlapping cars behind the Safety Car, and the regulation has also been reworded from “ANY lapped cars are required to overtake” to “ALL lapped cars are required to overtake”.
In the statement, the FIA also made clear that the results from Abu Dhabi, and therefore the championship, are valid and cannot be challenged after Mercedes opted not pursue an appeal of their initial protest that was dismissed.
This means, whatever your view on what took place, Max Verstappen will remain the 2021 F1 world champion.
Whether that means the debate over Abu Dhabi will calm down though, is a very different matter.