Masi ‘basically gifted’ title to Verstappen claims ex-F1 steward

Michael Masi “gifted” the 2021 world championship to Max Verstappen, a former F1 driver and steward has claimed.

The 2021 F1 season concluded in controversy after former FIA race director Masi free-styled the regulations with his handling of a late Safety Car by allowing one final lap of racing.

Masi’s decision contravened the rules on two counts and enabled Red Bull’s Verstappen, who had pitted for fresh soft tyres, to overtake Lewis Hamilton, who stayed out on used hards, on the last lap to snatch both the race win and title away from the Mercedes driver.

An FIA inquiry found that “human error” was a factor for the rules being broken and Masi was removed from his position.

Danny Sullivan, who raced for Tyrrell in 1983, served as an FIA driver steward for 14 years including during two rounds of the 2021 F1 season, though he was not involved in the controversial finale in Abu Dhabi.

“The stewards never had a call on any of that stuff,” Sullivan told Epartrade. “People were yelling at him that they didn’t want to finish under yellow because it didn’t look good.

“That’s why he waved by five cars, which basically gave Max a shot. Well, under the rules, he’s supposed to wave by all lapped cars. But if they had done that, they wouldn’t have finished the race. They would have had to finish under yellow, because the other lapped cars were back further in the field.

“So he let the five by, and then he put Max right behind Lewis. Max had stopped for tyres – Lewis had not – he’s on qualifying tyres, he’s on reds. Lewis’s tyres had 44 laps on them. There was not a chance in hell that he wasn’t going to pass him at that stage. He [Masi] basically gifted him the world championship on that decision.”

Sullivan added: “To be fair to Michael, he’s 23 [sic] races into the season. These guys are travelling non-stop, they’re being beat up all the time by teams, everybody. There’s all kinds of controversy. A lot of pressure, lateness, last five minutes of basically the season.

“And again, that’s my viewpoint. If you’re a Max fan – and I’m a Max fan, don’t misunderstand me – but if I’m Dutch and I am leaning more towards Max, I would say ‘but that was the call’. And it was, Max didn’t do anything.

“But it was not for me a good call. That’s my opinion and everybody can debate that and we will until we all stop.”

No bias in F1 stewards room

Sullivan insisted he never experienced any bias during his time as a steward in F1.

“I’d like to clarify one thing: there’s [a] driver steward in the room, but there are three other stewards in there as well, so it’s a panel decision,” he explained.

“There’s been a couple of cases where I was overruled even though I thought that I was correct, but the other panellists disagreed with all the information that we had.

“And just to prove, the public would probably like to know this, the data that we have is unequivocal. There’s nothing like it. We got everybody’s in-car camera. We’ve got throttle traces, we’ve got brake pressure, we’ve got steering input, we’ve got in-car cameras. In a lot of the cases we interview the drivers, we can if there’s a situation after the event. So it’s very thorough.

“In all the years I did it, 14 years, I never felt any bias from anybody. Nobody was like, ‘well, that’s a buddy of mine, so I’m going to rule in their favour or anything like that’. It was pretty straightforward.”