Masi acted like a know-it-all

(Motorsport-Total.com) – Four months after the 2021 Formula 1 final in Abu Dhabi, which was so bitter for Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff spoke publicly in an interview for the first time against the FIA race director Michael Masi, who has since been fired played a central role in the controversy surrounding the race.
“He was a burden for the sport,” says Wolff im Interview with the ‘Press Association’ about Masi, “because everyone was talking about Abu Dhabi and the race director, but the race director shouldn’t really be a person to talk about. He should be someone who does his job and makes sure that the race is conducted according to the rules.”
And as is well known, Wolff had a different view than Masi. Even if one could argue that it was secondary whether five cars were allowed to lap back or all of them, strictly according to the rules the race in Abu Dhabi should never have been allowed to go on the last lap, but only on the lap after – too late for that Verstappen.
Wolff: Forgetting is not so easy…
As a result of the controversy, Mercedes refused to take part in the FIA gala in Paris, and Hamilton, otherwise omnipresent on Instagram, Twitter & Co., went into hiding for weeks. The FIA, under its new President Mohammed bin Sulayem, who was elected to succeed Jean Todt a few days after Abu Dhabi, headed one investigation of the events a.
This ultimately cost Masi his job. At the presentation of the 2022 Mercedes on February 18, Wolff expressly stated that that we now have to “leave Abu Dhabi behind us” because: “We have to look to 2022.” But he also said: “We will not forget what happened. It’s impossible.”
And the thing with ticking off really seems to be difficult for him. Masi was “immune to feedback” and “until today” didn’t see “that he did anything wrong,” says Wolff – and tells an anecdote from the Wednesday before the season finale in Abu Dhabi, where he met Masi for lunch .
There he said to Masi: “I don’t want to lecture you, but you have to accept criticism and develop yourself through this criticism. Lewis does it every day, but you seem to be someone who thinks you always have to know better.”
It was not about wanting to influence Masi, emphasizes Wolff, “but I wanted to give him my honest feedback and advise him not to reflexively dismiss every opinion from outside as wrong”.
What role did Wednesday lunch play?
This history may also explain why in the dramatic final minutes of the 2021 World Cup final, four days after lunch together, there was that emotionally charged radio communication between Wolff (“No Michael! No Michael, no! That was so not right!”) and Masi (“Toto, it’s called a motor race, okay? We went car racing.”) came.
Wolff adds: “You hear the stories from the drivers about how the driver briefings were held. Some of the guys think it was almost disrespectful how he treated some of them.” And: “There is an organizer in the Middle East who said that he was so relieved that he was gone because he had been insulted by him.”
By the way: With one of the two Masi successors, Niels Wittich, there are already the first conflicts in the Formula 1 paddock. So Wittich insists on one thing jewelry banwhich is enshrined in the regulations – much to the dismay of Hamilton, who has no plans to remove the piercings he has worn for years now…