This is going to be a little bit of a more lofi, rough and ready video as I just want
to get into the crux of the thing everything’s arguing about with regards to the final few
laps of the 2021 F1 World Championship finale. I basically just want to lay out the facts
as they exist because a lot of this is arguing over the dense language of the technical regulations
and their interpretations. I have some opinions but hopefully you’ve find them balanced
enough, even if you disagree. But first - big congratulations to Max Verstappen
on winning the 2021 World Championship. He’s been a tremendous contender this year, finding
incredible speed and racing incredibly hard for every position.
Apart from Hungary, every race he actually finished, he finished in the top two. He took
on a 7 time world champion in a team on the performance streak of a lifetime and came
out on top. And on balance, he did have a healthy share
of bad luck along the way, losing massive chunks of potential points in Azerbaijan,
Britain and Hungary in particular through little to no fault of his own so to be handed
a lucky hand at the end of Abu Dhabi is nothing I have a problem with. He’s a worthy champion
indeed. And speaking of luck, I also don’t have
a problem with a surprise safety car twist at the end of the final race changing up the
fortunes of the leading drivers. It’s a thing that happens often through the season.
It can go either way and - quite importantly - teams will always be hypothesising and strategising
for the possibility Safety Car at any point of the race.
As it happened in Abu Dhabi, the Safety Car worked in a way to benefit Max. That’s how
it goes. What I want to focus on specifically is the
way the Race Director withdrew the safety car with regards to the regulations, and to
do that we can focus on the protest Mercedes filed after the race as our framework for
understanding this. First, here’s what happened:
On lap 53 of a 58 lap race, Hamilton was leading Verstappen by about eleven seconds and looks
to have the win in hand, when Latifi crashed at Turn 14, prompting the deployment of the
Safety Car. This obviously bunches the field up, reducing
the lead Hamilton had maintained over Max. On top of this, Verstappen was able to jump
into the pits for scrubbed soft tyres while Hamilton was still on 39 lap old Hard tyres.
The performance deficit between these two tyres sets would be significant.
Mercedes didn’t pit Hamilton because losing track position to Verstappen would be an instant
game over. And they couldn’t be sure the race would be restarted.
And therein lies one of the problems. There were only 5 laps remaining once the Safety
Car train formed. Would one of the most exciting, epic, enthralling world championships in history
really be ending behind a safety car? Surely no one wanted that.
And actually, the teams and race directors had agreed before the race that it would be
a priority to get the race going again, should a safety car come late in the race.
Another issue was that there were five lapped cars between Hamilton in P1 and Verstappen
in P2. It had become customary to allow lapped cars to overtake the safety and wind their
way to the back of the train so that cars that were fighting for position were brought
together at the restart. But we were running out of time.
So, Race Control declared on Lap 56 that lapped cars would not be allowed to overtake, in
the interest of speeding up the process to get the race restarted. At this point, they
were still clearing up the remains of the Latifi accident and Race Control don’t like
to let the lapped cars loose while there are still marshalls on track.
But on Lap 57 - the penultimate lap - Race Control ordered the five cars between the
leader (and only the five cars between the leaders) to unlap themselves, and then immediately
declared that the Safety Car would be pitting this lap, setting up one final racing lap.
We know what happened next - Verstappen on his newer softs overtook Hamilton and held
him off to take the win and the championship. So, Mercedes protested breaches of article
48.12 of the Sporting Regulations, so let’s have a look at that.
This is the article in full but I’ll break down the key points:
Firstly, it indicates that the message “Lapped Cars May Now Overtake” may be sent out,
which mandates that all the lapped cars must pass the cars on the leading lap, and the
safety car. These cars must then make their way around
the circuit and to the back of the safety car train.
It also indicates quite clearly that once the last lapped car has passed the leader,
the Safety Car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.
The wording of this regulation dictates that the Safety Car is supposed to do one more
lap, after the lapped cars have made their way past.
And essentially, these are the two points of conflict that Mercedes have brought up
in their protest. One: that ALL lapped cars are supposed to
unlap themselves and overtake the leader Two: that, once the backmarkers are past,
the Safety Car is supposed to do one more complete lap at least.
This last bit is basically to ensure they are well out of the way and are back in the
train when the race restarts. So essentially, the protest makes the point
that the proper restart procedures weren’t followed and for the classification to be
amended. I’ll skip over Red Bull’s defence because
it’s the Masi’s explanation stewards’ rejection conclusions that are the real point
here. So Michael Masi, the race director, says that
basically he only used Article 48.12 to get rid of some cars that were in the way of the
leaders but actually Article 48.13 was the main article invoked here. And the Stewards
agree, that Article 48.13 “overrides” article 48.12.
So what does this mean? Article 48.13 dictates that once the Clerk
of the Course sends out the message “Safety Car In This Lap”, the Safety Car HAS to
come in and the rest of the cars go into race restart preparation procedure.
And this is where is all gets a bit skwiffy in my eyes. So, essentially this means that
while 48.12 states clearly that it is convention that all lapped cars must unlap the leaders
AND that the safety car must do at least one more lap after than, the stewards say you
can basically ignore all the diktats of 48.12 by just throwing the “Safety Car in this
Lap” message. As soon as you throw that message, apparently,
none of the rules in 48.12 apply. This is… muddy water. Partly because it
feels like there’s no point to giving a lengthy description to the safe and fair process
of how cars are meant to unlap from the train if there’s another rule that says the Clerk
can bring the safety car in whenever, regardless of whether the written regulations are followed.
And partly because… this isn’t how races have been run before. Teams and drivers have
an expectation of how race procedure works and plan and run accordingly. In the space
of a few seconds, a handful of cars were told to unlap and drivers were told a restart was
about to happen. Something not laid out in the rules
Now, it’s also important to point out that the Stewards points to article 15.3. And this
is a big one. Let’s go through it. So Article 15 as a whole basically lays out
the roles and responsibilities of the main race control officials.
15.3 maps out the relationship between the Clerk of the Course and the Race Director,
but essentially, they work in harmony together with the Clerk of the Course basically being
the person to actually manage the racetrack (like calling Safety Cars, Red Flags and deploying
safety vehicles) but under the behest of the Race Director. Masi has final call on everything,
but the Clerk of the Course is the one who actually communicates with the on-track operations.
And that’s actually the point of 15.3. It lays out all the key responsibilities of the
Clerk of the Course but notes that they operate in consultation with the Race Director and
the Race Director has final say and can override the Clerk if necessary.
But the stewards interpret this article in an interesting way, essentially reading it
as “The Race Director shall have overriding authority in The use of the Safety Car”,
meaning that basically Masi has carte blanche say over how the safety car is used.
This is a bit troubling in general. Not only is this NOT what this article is meant to
be about (again, it’s just laying out responsibilities) but declaring that Michael Masi can literally
just do whatever he wants with the Safety Car, no matter what the pages and pages of
regulations say regarding Safety Car use, is a dangerous precedent.
So, just to be clear, this isn’t about being bitter about Lewis losing the title or even
about Safety Cars deciding the championship. I want to reiterate that because basically
everything I’m about to say about proper use of the regulations puts Hamilton in a
much more advantageous position, but I can’t help that.
So, following the letter of the regulations instead of kind of fudging it in the way that
he did, the Race Director had basically three options:
1) Finish the race under the safety car. And, I think if we’re all honest with ourselves,
were this round 6 of the season and not the championship decider, this race would have
almost certainly finished behind the safety car. There would have been no rush to get
it restarted. The downside: a neutralised end to the title
deciding finale. Is it up to Masi to have this on his mind? We’ll come back to that.
2) Restart the race for one lap but don’t let lapped cars past the safety car. It’s
not mandatory for to get lapped cars out of the way, and without that part of the procedure,
the Race Director could have easily restarted the race without blurring the written rules
The downside: we don’t get to see Hamilton and Verstappen together on track. But, sometimes
that’s the way things go. Verstappen was able to get on soft tyres but he still has
to pass some backmarkers. Some might call it more fair as Hamilton had his lead neutralised
but I’m not interested in fudging the luck of the draw either.
3) Red Flag the race when Latifi crashed. Everyone gets fresh tyres and we do a 4 lap
sprint race to the finish. This puts everyone on an even playing field and it could have
gone either way. The problem with this is, there wasn’t really
a good reason to red flag OTHER than setting up a big showdown finale. But seeing as decisions
were made to force a big showdown finale anyway, this ends up probably being the best decision
in hindsight. So what’s the problem we’ve got? It’s
kind of annoying that this is all coupled in with a title-deciding moment because I
really want to focus on the race direction aspect without it looking like I’m just
mad that a title was stolen from anyone. Because I don’t. Max and Lewis drove the race that
was given to them and did it brilliantly. Taking the title away from Max would be…
horrible. No, I want to focus on race direction in general
because I think we’ve had some very wobbly Race Control and stewarding this year and
it has to stop. There have been a lot of calls and decisions and penalties (or lack of) that
are completely inconsistent from one another and have left teams, drivers and media completely
unclear on what the actual rules are. We need to go into races, drivers need to
fight with each other, knowing exactly what the rules are and what happens if they’re
broken. I think track limits completely exemplifies
this. Instead of the white lines clearly defining the limits of a race track - whereby if you
go outside the white lines, that’s illegal - the official define different rules for
different corners - maybe a white line, maybe a kerb - they change the rules through a weekend
and some corners they don’t monitor at all and you can go as wide as you like.
We need to go into 2022 knowing exactly what the rules are under different circumstances.
And we don’t need the Race Director to have absolute power over fudging rules and making
up procedures on the fly. In fact, we don’t need the Race Director to have one mind of
what makes a good show. They are there to keep the race to time and to make sure it
operates safely and under the rules. In my opinion, the Race Director shouldn’t
be a super authority but operate as part of a team, which, importantly, can challenge
their decisions and make sure everything works in the way the regulations lay out. This way,
everyone knows what’s going on. The problem with the Race Director’s decision
making in Abu Dhabi (including the bizarre call to let Hamilton get away with corner
cutting) is that it makes Formula 1 look more like a circus than a sport. Are these serious
athletes or just players in a show? Leave it to Netflix to give Formula 1 the
dramatic framing. The Race Director is here to run a sport.