Toto Wolff has mirrored on Lewis Hamilton’s 2021 F1 title, describing FIA race director Michael Masi as a “lunatic”.
Hamilton was main the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix up till the ultimate lap, having managed the race from the entrance.
The win for Hamilton would have handed him a record-breaking eighth F1 world title.
Nonetheless, a late-race Security Automobile attributable to Williams’ Nicholas Latifi led to some of the controversial choices in sporting historical past.
In a bid to get the race again underway and for the title to be determined on-track, Masi allowed a lot of backmarkers to unlap themselves.
Masi didn’t comply with the FIA’s pointers, although, as not all lapped vehicles got the possibility to take action.
Solely the vehicles between Hamilton and Max Verstappen have been allowed by means of.
This gave Verstappen, who was on contemporary tyres, a free run at Hamilton on the ultimate lap.
Wolff slams Masi over Abu Dhabi 2021
In an interview with The Telegraph, Wolff admitted that concerning Abu Dhabi 2021, he hadn’t skilled that degree of “lack of management” since being a baby.
Michael Masi
“I’ve not skilled the lack of management of a state of affairs since I used to be a baby,” Wolff mentioned.
“There’s one lunatic who can principally destroy the file of the best champion of all time.”
Susie Wolff, head of F1 Academy, additionally mirrored on the incident, describing her response as “disbelief”.
“It was disbelief. That one individual’s determination to interpret the foundations, in a manner that that they had by no means been interpreted earlier than, might have induced such an end result. It sat so closely with me, for a very long time afterwards,” she mentioned.
Following an FIA investigation, Masi’s actions have been described as “human error”.
He was subsequently changed as race director forward of the 2022 F1 season.
