The crucial missing ingredient from F1's Abu Dhabi response

Throw ’em a bit of what they want – it’s an effective tactic whether you’re (hypothetically speaking, of course) a scandal-hit prime minister buying back favour with antsy backbenchers or, indeed, a newly installed FIA president juggling an unexpectedly hot potato left by your predecessor.

When it became clear the outgoing Todt regime’s strategy for dealing with the after-stink of the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP – just tell the punters they’re too dumb to understand how motor racing works – wasn’t going to cut it, Mohammed ben Sulayem smoothly executed a U-turn, announcing an official inquiry into the embarrassing affair.

Essentially, to some extent an ongoing hissy fit on social media can be ignored, but F1’s biggest box office stars cannot. When your most important championship’s most bankable name takes himself off to the Rockies for the winter, leaving the threat that he may not come back hanging in the air, the wise FIA president swings into action.

As such, resulting from an inquiry which has consulted both teams and drivers, many of the parties most irked by the events of Yas Marina have been given what they want. While Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff denies he dropped the appeal against the Abu Dhabi result on condition of being delivered race director Michael Masi’s head on a silver platter, something along those lines has eventuated.

In a new structure, former DTM race director Niels Wittich, who had previously been confirmed as Masi’s deputy for this season, will alternate with ex-WEC race director Eduardo Freitas, overseen by “permanent senior advisor” Herbie Blash – the late Charlie Whiting’s deputy until he was nudged into early retirement in 2016.

Michael Masi has been replaced by Eduardo Freitas and Niels Wittich as F1 race director in the Abu Dhabi GP fallout

Photo by: Erik Junius

Masi “will be offered a new position within the FIA”, which some (including Max Verstappen) may view as inspecteur en chef du dessous des autobus. The new race directors will be supported by an off-site facility known as Virtual Race Control, offering real-time backup.

Analysis: Why Masi’s departure from F1 was an inevitable call

While the crux of the matter – the unlapping procedure behind the Safety Car – has received only mild tweaks in the latest sporting regulations, the FIA and F1 confirmed that the teams’ channels of communication to the race director will have a stricter protocol and not be available for broadcast. Rightly so. A certain lack of respect for the now former race director was palpable in these communications. Knowing their words would be heard by millions, team managers and principals bullied and hectored the race director like expensive lawyers grandstanding to a jury.

“I put faith and trust alongside each other. Trust can be lost in the blink of an eye or the flick of a finger. But to earn trust is something that is built over a long period of time” Lewis Hamilton

Respect cannot be bought, it must be earned, and the re-hiring of Blash – a long-established and trusted F1 ‘face’ – demonstrates the new president’s keen political antennae. Lewis Hamilton, who has said publicly that he “lost faith” in the FIA last season, alluded to this theme when he emerged from his winter retreat.

“I put faith and trust alongside each other,” he said. “Trust can be lost in the blink of an eye or the flick of a finger. But to earn trust is something that is built over a long period of time.”

But one thing remains to be seen – the findings of the FIA inquiry, as yet unpublished. In effect the governing body has been marking its own homework. Only through full transparency will it be able to provide a definitive account of why its processes failed in Abu Dhabi – and establish whether the removal of the race director was the appropriate course of action or simply a sacrifice to appease the mob, leaving a broken system merely patched.

“I think hopefully everyone will get to see it,” says Hamilton, “and to have perhaps a better understanding of everything… so we can move forwards and in a positive light.”

The FIA is set to release the findings of its Abu Dhabi GP investigation later this week

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images