The new president of the FIA Mohammed Ben Sulayem formalizes the decision after the controversy that followed in Abu Dhabi 2021.
Michael Masi he is no longer the race director of the Formula 1 World Championship. The announcement was made by the president of the FIA, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who also revealed the names of his replacements: “Niels Wittich and Eduardo Freitas will alternately act as race directorassisted by Herbie Blash as permanent consultant. “The Australian Masi had ended up in the storm for the management of the final of the Abu Dhabi GPthe last stage of the last World Championship which awarded the Max Verstappen world title amid protests from Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton.
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Since December, the FIA has been involved in the verification process on excited phases of the controversial epilogue of the last World Cup, when Masi had indicated which cars could split from the safety car and which could not, leaving the Dutch and the English “free” to fight for the title in a single last lap. From that investigation, it was promised, a complete report will be released in the days before the start of the World Cup (March 20 in Bahrain), in order to be able to design a clear regulatory framework to prevent a similar case from happening again in the future.
However, Masi will remain in the FIA world as Mohamed bin Sulayem announced that he was offered an internal role within the Federation International. In fact, the removal of the Australian referee from the “button room” represents a victory for Mercedes (who had actually asked for the head of Masi). We recall that the Abu Dhabi episode was preceded by two other examples of questionable management: in the penultimate round of the World Championship in Saudi Arabia and – at the end of the summer – in the very wet Belgian GP.
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