The 'massive void' left by a lost legend

The Formula 1 paddock is rarely united. It became exactly that during the Australian Grand Prix weekend, bonded through sadness and disbelief after long-serving FIA race director Charlie Whiting's sudden death. The tributes that flowed and the sadness that prevailed during the opening weekend of the new season were a measure of the respect and admiration the 66-year-old had earned among drivers, teams and various personnel.

Plenty has been said and written about the qualities of the irreplaceable Whiting, and the impact his death will have on F1. However, Whiting's true impact is best illustrated by the scope of his dedication and expertise, and that extended well beyond F1 races.

As race director, safety delegate and permanent starter, he was the go-to man for teams and drivers during a grand prix weekend, chairing the drivers' briefing and team managers' meeting, inspecting the circuit, running race control, controlling the start, and doing just about everything you could imagine in terms of managing practice, qualifying and the race. But he was so much more to F1 and the wider motorsport world.

Whiting was an active member of the FIA's single-seater, circuit and safety commissions; he moulded, scrutinised and implemented the F1 rulebook, and his commitment to junior single-seater categories encouraged a trickle-down effect to ensure the latest breakthroughs in technology and safety were not simply the luxury of 20 grand prix drivers.

"There is an enormous void in that respect," ex-F1 driver Karun Chandhok, who worked with Whiting on the single-seater commission, tells Autosport. "Everyone deferred to Charlie, especially in terms of the circuit safety and circuit homologation stuff. His word was gospel.

"You almost need five or six people to do his job. There's parallels with Bernie Ecclestone in that. They wore so many different hats, and juggled everything, and their loss is only felt when they are not around anymore."

Ecclestone hired Whiting at his Brabham team in the late '70s, but they share more than just a note in one another's CVs. Ecclestone would go on to become probably the single most influential figure in F1 history before being moved aside towards the end of 2016 when Liberty Media took control of the commercial rights. However, rarely - if ever - has one person influenced F1 and motorsport as a whole in the varied way Whiting has.

As Nikolas Tombazis, the ex-Ferrari head of aerodynamics who became the FIA's head of single-seater matters in 2018, says to Autosport: "What I saw when I was working for a team was the tip of the iceberg. You saw something and thought, 'That's quite a lot of work!' Then when you go in there, you see it's much more wide-ranging."

The FIA's desire for a single-seater pyramid led to the creation of F4, and the rebranding of GP2 and GP3 to F2 and F3. Mekies credits Whiting as the one trying to make that happen on Jean Todt's behalf

It's not that Whiting's importance to F1 has been overstated. He was vital to the mechanisms by which F1 operates and his former deputy Laurent Mekies describes him to Autosport as "probably the most central person" to the running of grands prix.

But this also went for team concerns, internal requests within the FIA, and for officials based around the world working for different governing bodies, and a lot more.

Whiting has often been heralded for his work ethic and the commitment he showed to safety is a significant example of that. F1 travel is a brutal business and it is hard enough flying from race-to-race with a small break at home in between, or a trip back to the factory for team personnel. Whiting's usual pre-weekend examinations of the circuit as safety delegate on a grand prix weekend were only part of what he would commit to.

He would use "breaks" between races to fly to different circuits to complete safety checks of existing venues or carry out inspections of possible new ones.

"He was constantly on an aeroplane," says Mekies, now Ferrari's sporting director. "We are travelling back on a Sunday evening to Europe [after the Australian GP], and he was saying 'I'm going to use being in Australia to do my Suzuka inspections for the end of the year, and after Suzuka maybe I'll stop to go to Vietnam to see the progress of the work there. And from there I'll fly to Bahrain...'."

Whiting was a key cog in the FIA's relentless drive for continuous improvement of circuit safety, using his visits to report back to the circuit commission. He would not be content with doing this just to improve standards for F1, but how it could benefit junior single-seater series as well.

"Charlie's ulterior motives were transparency, honesty and doing the best thing for the sport. People might have disagreed with him, but I don't think anyone ever doubted his motivation" Nikolas Tombazis

"One thing I didn't know before joining the FIA is how interested Charlie was in lower categories such as F2 or F3," says Tombazis. "He would participate in various commission meetings for those categories because I think largely on the safety side he had it in his heart that safety isn't just for the 20 guys in F1, it's for younger people, sometimes kids, that race in those categories."

The FIA's desire for a single-seater pyramid led to the creation of the Formula 4 category, the rebranding of GP2 and GP3 to Formula 2 and (this year) Formula 3. Mekies credits Whiting as the one trying to make that happen on FIA president Jean Todt's behalf.

"He participated in the technical definition of the F4 cars, the F3 cars, the F2 cars, and also the sporting framework the FIA wanted for the championships," he says. "So effectively, anything that had four uncovered wheels and was doing some races on a Sunday, he was involved with in some way."

That commitment to junior series, which would have been through the single-seater commission, stuns Chandhok. "We once had a 45-minute conversation on engine regulations of Formula 4," he says. "How many hours did this guy have in a day? He knew it. He knew the rules, he knew the discussion."

Whiting's time-management was impeccable, and it had to be given his dedication to matters well beyond the remit of your average race director. He led race director training seminars, and steward training seminars, to try to pass on the experience he gained from decades of work at the top of motorsport. Given his own affection for motorsport and the good grace that made him somehow impervious to the politics of F1, it's no surprise he offered such warmth to those who also gave their time and effort to the cause.

"When we were running the Indian Grand Prix, we had to do this training programme for the 1200 marshals," remembers Chandhok. "Charlie showed up for 10 minutes at the end of the day to chat with them. The end of every long day, just before he went to the hotel, he stuck his head in the marshals' catering tent, these 1200 people, and thanked everybody for their work."

Another way that Whiting would endear himself to people was his virtual communication. His ability to reply to emails, on any subject, from any person, is the stuff of legend.

Mekies says: "I remember one of the first questions I asked him when I joined the FIA, I said, 'OK, now we are working together, I want to know how do you answer all your emails in 15 minutes whoever is writing you at any times?'.

"I was expecting to find some sort of super-clever classification system behind it. He said, 'No, I just come and start the email'. The ability he had to deal with the scope of what he was covering was unbelievable."

Personal attributes like these helped him excel in each of the professional circles he operated in. He is universally described as a man who treated everyone with respect, from young FIA newcomers to the multiple world championship-winning F1 drivers he had to send to the naughty step or explain a decision to.

It's not that Whiting was completely flawless, even if it may seem like he has been deified by those remembering him. He made errors, miscalculations and misjudgments. He was not always right.

"But the most important characteristic is it was always clear to everybody that Charlie's ulterior motives were transparency, honesty and doing the best thing for the sport," says Tombazis. "People might have disagreed sometimes with his decisions, but I don't think anyone ever doubted his motivation. That was very important for his integrity in the sport and why people trusted him.

"Frankly, the proportion of decisions to errors was very small. He complemented that with humility and knowledge. He had opinions about certain matters, but when I would discuss certain things with him I knew once his opinions had been put on the table, there was no ego in defending them.

"Some people dig their heels in and keep insisting things that are not defendable. He was very open about things. He would be very flexible to change opinions if he felt arguments had shifted."

"He would never say, 'We do it like that because I said it'. He was extremely open and wanted to hear people's views before making a decision" Laurent Mekies

Chandhok gives a good example of exactly this attitude. The FIA's drivers' commission works to give a voice to those behind the wheel and works in tandem with other groups to try to better inform major decisions. Chandhok says that the feedback from five-time Le Mans 24 Hours Emanuele Pirro, who works on both the drivers' and circuit commissions, was that Whiting was beginning to show "a shift in his thought process" and reconsidering his position on things like bigger kerbs and natural deterrents like gravel and grass instead of sending incidents to the stewards to discuss.

"He was sitting in these commissions, everyone would look at him ready to take whatever he would say as the new rules," says Mekies. "He would be so open about it. I don't remember him having to impose his view on anybody. He was very conscious the reality of F1 might not be applicable to the reality of lower formulas. And the same thing for the tracks: what he would be asking for a track like Melbourne wouldn't be what he'd ask for Grade 2 or Grade 3 tracks.

"He would never say 'we do it like that because I said it'. He was extremely open and wanting to hear people's views and people's practical experience before making a decision."

As much as his wide-ranging influence should be celebrated more, his primary recognition comes via his F1 role for a reason. But even in an F1 context it is vital to look beyond his grand prix weekend responsibilities.

One of Whiting's roles was as the F1 safety delegate, which he took up in 1996. Tombazis describes the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna as "the wake-up call" for F1 and credits Whiting for being "very involved" in the continuous improvement in safety since that awful San Marino Grand Prix weekend in 1994.

"Clearly the sport is not completely safe, it's still a dangerous sport, but it's night and day safer than it was then," says Tombazis. "A lot can be attributed to Charlie's involvement. It's a team effort but he was very active in that, whether it's headrests or halos or crash-test requirements, anti-penetration panels or wheel tethers. All of those, Charlie has been very actively involved with."

Whiting's experience, intelligence and knowledge made him vital to F1's technical side too. He laid the foundation for the current technical package, and remained very much on the ball when it came to policing the regulations as well.

"He was second to no one in using the teams to understand what was going on with their legalities," says Mekies. "The FIA couldn't have the same firepower in terms of technical capabilities to analyse this or that aspect of the car. But because he had the feedback of all the teams, and because he organised that feedback, he could actually be at the front end of that."

That meant Whiting wasn't just a figurehead on the F1 Technical Working Group, or Strategy Group, or F1 Commission, or FIA Motor Sport Council. He was at the centre of all these most influential commissions and meetings defining the present and future of F1.

But Whiting wasn't interested in being a powerful figure for the sake of it. He loved motorsport, and wanted to make it a better place. It helped him become a leader of so many of F1's core groups in more than just name.

His experience, intelligence, practicality, openness, integrity and sheer kindness marked him out as a true one-of-a-kind. Precious few people have those qualities, and more, in abundance, let alone people in positions of power. That's why he deserves to be thought of as a legend of motorsport, not just F1, and why he leaves such a tremendous vacuum.

"He was more than a defining figure," says Mekies. "He was central to everybody, central to all the topics. I cannot imagine one topic relating to F1 in which Charlie wouldn't be involved. Maybe some commercial aspects, but everything else would concern him. And because of his incredible openness and approach, always happy to give advice, everybody would try to seek his view."

What happens next is a difficult subject to broach. 'How to replace Charlie Whiting?' feels almost as wrong a thing to ask as it will be impossible to answer, and perhaps that's best left for the FIA to get on with in private. The rest can spend the time reflecting on a man who never looked like a motorsport colossus, but was exactly that.

"People understandably focused on his F1 role this weekend and the gap in F1 that's opened," says Chandhok. "But there's a much wider sport that's going to miss him."