The unanswered questions that define WEC 2021's controversial ending

That wasn't the way for two prestigious World Endurance Championship titles to be settled. The GTE Pro battle between Ferrari and Porsche at the Bahrain 8 Hours last weekend was a corker that deserved to be decided in a straight fight on track. Right now the drivers' and manufacturers' championships seem to be have been determined not out in the heat of the desert night but in an air-conditioned office.

The important question about the messy business last Saturday night was which office: race control or the stewards' room? Porsche contended that the decision to make Ferrari driver Alessandro Pier Guidi give back the position after pushing its #92 entry driven by Michael Christensen out of the lead wasn't based on the correct procedures.

PLUS: How the WEC's heavyweight duel reached its controversial flashpoint

The tenet of its rejected protest was that the sanction for the #51 Ferrari the Italian shared with James Calado came solely from the race director. The FIA International Sporting Code clearly states that such driving offences must be reported to the stewards.

Porsche's protest was summarily rejected on the grounds that the code was, in fact, adhered to. I say summarily because the stewards' bulletin was stamped 11:16pm. If Porsche took the full 30 minutes available to it to file its protest once the provisional results were out 17 minutes after the 10pm race finish, then the deliberation lasted no more than half an hour.

Yet that was pedestrian by the standards of the call in the closing minutes, the demand for Pier Guidi to relinquish the lead rather than receive a harsher penalty after the contact that sent Christensen spinning. It came well inside two minutes of the final-corner clash.

Pier Guidi's times through sectors 1 and 2 on the lap after the incident were pretty much normal, but in the final sector he was eight seconds off what he'd been doing on previous laps. That means he reacted to a call to cede position some time after he reached the beginning of sector 3 aboard his Ferrari 488 GTE Evo.

The #51 Ferrari headed the podium at the finish, but will the result stand?

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

His times for the first two sectors were 37s and 44s, and 47s for sector 3. I get to somewhere between 100 and 110s by guessing that he was halfway through the final third of the track when he started slowing. You'd need to add the few seconds that it took him to start the lap after the bump with Christensen, but also subtract the time it took for the AF Corse factory Ferrari team to communicate with their driver to get the exact figure. My calculations are a rough estimate, but they can't be too far out.

My question is simple: could the stewards really have made a decision in this time? Such a decision would surely needed to have involved viewing video evidence of the clash multiple times. And I mean watching multiple angles multiple times.

The live TV feed of the race fleetingly showed the race director, Eduardo Freitas, in discussion with a colleague immediately after the incident. Was it with one of the stewards who had ventured into race control? I can't tell you the answer to that one. Watching it again in slow-mo might give me the answer, but full coverage of the race hasn't appeared on the WEC's YouTube channel as I write this.

There has been no official explanation and there needs to be. So many unanswered questions about the last 11 minutes of the GTE Pro battle last weekend just can't be good for the WEC

Nor can I tell you whether further data was called upon before the decision was made, though the stewards' bulletin only talks about video evidence. In-time telemetry streams are available to the organisers and I would argue these needed to be examined to determine whether Christensen did anything untoward in the second or so before the impact.

The Dane insisted that he did nothing unusual as he was lapped by the United Autosports LMP2 ORECA. He pointed out that he was on his normal racing line, though he added when we spoke after the race that he had "to make sure I can make the corner". That probably meant braking slightly early to ensure he could tuck in behind the prototype and still hit the apex, all-important in a corner followed by a long straight. But a driver of Pier Guidi's experience would have known that.

I'm sure a call to a driver to give up his position when he biffs another car from behind isn't unprecedented, but it is definitely unusual. No stewards report has been published on the incident itself, but the sanction given to Pier Guidi means it must have been ruled some kind of racing incident. Anything more serious, and a stop-go would have been the required penalty.

It matters not that Pier Guidi didn't do it on purpose. He said he didn't, and I don't think anyone doubts him. But that is irrelevant if Christensen was doing nothing out of the normal. A mistake is a mistake and would surely constitute avoidable contact.

Christensen maintains he didn't do anything untoward under braking

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The lesser penalty handed to Pier Guidi was undoubtedly the pragmatic call as the clock ticked down, one made to keep a fantastic race alive. It backfired because Christensen ducked into the pits in the Porsche 911 RSR he shared with championship contenders Kevin Estre and Neel Jani at the end of the lap following the incident.

It was a scheduled splash almost exactly an hour after the car's previous stop. Pier Guidi followed suit at the end of the following lap, came out of the pits with just under a couple of seconds ahead and pushed on to win the race by three.

It turned out that the call to move over was rescinded, though this was never communicated over the timing screens. Exactly why it was dropped isn't clear because there was no stewards bulletin regarding the incident itself.

Did Porsche waive its right to get the position back by pitting Christensen? Or was it ruled that the eight of so seconds Pier Guidi lost by slowing in his attempts to do so were deemed to be enough of a penalty? (It should be noted that the Porsche resumed 10s behind the Ferrari after its spin.)

There has been no official explanation and there needs to be. So many unanswered questions about the last 11 minutes of the GTE Pro battle last weekend just can't be good for the WEC. The only thing we know for certain is that this one is going to run and run. Porsche has served notice of an appeal and if it pushes through with it, and it had 96 hours to put together its case.

That means the outcome of the WEC GTE Pro battle could yet change. This time the decision will be made at the the FIA's International Court of Appeal. And I'm sure it's all those involved will be nicely air-conditioned.

Ferrari took away the title, but it wasn't a fitting way to decide a thrilling fight

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images