Formula 1 teams bosses – most notably Toto Wolff and Christian Horner – arrived in London earlier this week to meet with the FIA and discover their initial findings from the investigation they are carrying out into the controversial closing stages of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Max Verstappen defeated Sir Lewis Hamilton to the championship in controversial fashion last year after race director Michael Masi had allowed a limited number of lapped runners past a late Safety Car following Nicholas Latifi’s crash.
This reneged on an earlier call to allow none of them past owing to time constraints, and Karun Chandhok has theorised that a brake fire on the stricken Williams elongated the Safety Car period and left the Australian with a tough decision to make.
Further convoluting the situation was the fact that Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley contacted Masi via team radio and said: “Those lapped cars; you don’t need to let them go right the way around and catch up with the back of the pack.
“You only need to let them go, and then we’ve got a motor race on our hands,” to which Masi replied, “understood.”
This was then followed by team principal Horner telling him that only “one racing lap” was necessary, and indeed Verstappen passed the seven-time world champion on the very last lap of the race.
Wolff would later tell the 44-year-old that the finish was “so not right,” before his team promised to hold the FIA “accountable” for their investigation.
One of the key results of the commission’s findings will be whether the race director, who took on his position in 2019 following Charlie Whiting’s passing, gets to keep his role heading into the new season.
New FIA president, Mohammed ben Sulayem, has shuffled Peter Bayer across to supervise Masi, and the new executive director of single-seaters is keen to put in place a support system that depressurises his stressful role.
Having said that, he did not rule out the Australian losing his job altogether.
The governing body did not give much away to the public after the meeting, but will soon reveal new practises to be put in place following the meeting with the teams yesterday.
“The FIA president led detailed discussions of the 2021 FIA Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix,” read a statement.
“Feedback from the Commission on matters raised will be incorporated into the President’s analysis and he will publicly present news of structural changes and action plan in the coming days.”
Also in the statement was confirmation of three sprint events in Imola, Austria and Brazil this upcoming season.
Furthermore, following the mayhem of last season’s farcical Belgian Grand Prix, it has been confirmed that no points are to be handed out unless the drivers have completed two laps of green flag racing in any given grand prix.