Michael Masi could be replaced as Formula 1’s race director before the start of the 2022 season, according to the FIA’s head of single-seaters Peter Bayer.
Masi’s future has been called into question following the controversial season finale in Abu Dhabi last year, when Max Verstappen beat Lewis Hamilton to the Drivers’ title.
Mercedes asserted that proper Safety Car restart protocols were not followed, and said it was determined to hold the FIA accountable.
An investigation is currently being carried out by the FIA, with Bayer admitting that there is a chance there will be a new race director for 2022.
“Michael did a super job in many ways,” he said, as quoted by BBC Sport. “We told him that. But also that there is a possibility there could be a new race director.
“[We are looking at] dividing the various tasks of the race director, who is also sports director, safety and track delegate.
“That was simply too much. These roles are divided between several people. This reduces the burden on the race director.”
Masi has occupied the role of race director since 2019, following the sudden passing of Charlie Whiting.
Rules regarding the Safety Car restart are currently being analysed, with one potential solution being freezing the lap count if there’s a Safety Car intervention in the latter stages.
“If neutralisation is necessary in the last two laps of the race, the lap counting ends and the laps are added at the end of the safety car phase,” Bayer said. “This could cause a fuel problem in F1, which is why it is being looked at more closely.
“We also asked the teams if their requirement not to finish a race under Safety Car was still relevant, to which they all agreed.”
If that happens, have ‘they’ also thought about the competency of the FIA Super licence Stewards who ruled that the modification of the safety car rules was within the power of the Race Director!!
Then there was also the ruling that overtaking under the Safety Car was OK as long as there was no lasting advantage!!
Another unofficial dispensation rather than a 5 or 10 sec penalty?
Replacing him won’t help. Formula 1 is owned by businessmen who are hellbent on making F1 just another pedestrian tardsport. They don’t know anything about F1, nor do they care about it as long as a profit is made.
F1 used to feel special when it was an exclusive sport for the elite of the world which appealed to (mostly) sophisticated viewers, and was probably one of the last forms of entertainment to do this. When this segment of entertainment used to exist, it gave people aspirations to do better in life. Now F1 has been dumbed down and turned into just another inelegant form of entertainment for normals. It used to be the true Pinnacle of Motorsport featuring the best in drivers, team personnel, manufactures, and sponsors; and was presented in an intelligent, elegant manner in which turned away most people because they didn’t understand it. And this was a good thing, and if you don’t understand why, find an archive of an old F1 forum from 10-20 years ago, then go look at a site like Motorsport dot com and look at the comments. And if you still don’t understand what I mean, then you are a part of the problem and probably cannot be helped.
The worst thing that ever happened to F1 was changing the sport to attract those types with loud animated graphics, the new ridiculous poorly-designed F1 logo which screams “average” (designed by a guy whose only experience in graphics was making rap album cover “art”, no really — I know him), the massive overuse of social media, allowing politics to create drama/ratings, extreme leniency towards certain drivers breaking the code of conduct (which in the past would have had them banned for several races or from the sport), too much access inside the teams (which has killed the mystique behind F1) via pit radio/behind the scenes/etc. More is not always better, and this goes for revenue, viewership, as well as content.
F1 had something very special. It’s now simply pedestrian and might as well be renamed IndyCar Ultra.