FIA chose to remove “pressure and stress” from Masi – Ben Sulayem

2022 Bahrain Grand Prix

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FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem says the sport’s governing body replaced Michael Masi as race director due to the pressure he was under in the role.

However he confirmed the FIA and Masi are in discussions about a possible future role for him within the organisation.

Masi was replaced as a result of his handling of last year’s championship-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The FIA published the findings of its report into the controversial race yesterday.

It stated Masi did not follow its rules correctly in two respects when he restarted the race on the final lap: By bringing the Safety Car in too early and by not letting all lapped cars unlap themselves. As a result, Max Verstappen was handed an opportunity to overtake Lewis Hamilton to win the race, and the world championship.

The report said Masi was under considerable pressure at the time, including from the team principals representing the two drivers. The FIA decided “to take the pressure and the stress from him because really he went through a lot,” said Ben Sulayem.

“We are grateful for the three years that he invested with us and he put his time in. But now we are negotiating with him, of course, to stay in the FIA, he is an important figure to us. So our people are negotiating other, I would say, not a job, but another place for him within the FIA.”

As the 2022 F1 calendar has expanded to 23 rounds this year, Ben Sulayem said the demands of the growing schedule made it necessary to divide the race director role between two people. Niels Wittich and Eduardo Freitas will share the role, while Herbie Blash will act as an advisor.

“A race control director cannot be just one director,” said Ben Sulayem. “That’s the reason we brought some of our staff back like Herbie, for example, to support the race director.

“On top of that, we have to do rotations also, not just one. Because if you talk about 23 races, human fatigue is there, you’re talking about travels, so that cannot be so. This is also a solution.”

From this weekend the race direction team will also be supported by the FIA’s new Remote Operations Centre, which has been likened to the Video Assistant Referee used in football. Ben Sulayem said he was behind this “very important” change to the sport’s officiating procedures.

“The idea came to me in January when I made a visit to some of the Formula 1 teams and we went to one of the launches,” he explained. “I said, ‘what’s that, It looks like a theatre?. And they said, this is actually a race control, but virtual. I said, ‘why don’t we have one?’

“So now we invested in it and it’s actually working since yesterday. So we didn’t promise, we are delivering.

“So they will have another race control director. They will have also officials. They will have also from the legal department. Then they will support it. The virtual race control will not be running the race. The race will be run from the country itself.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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12 comments on “FIA chose to remove “pressure and stress” from Masi – Ben Sulayem”

  1. On top of that, we have to do rotations also, not just one. Because if you talk about 23 races, human fatigue is there, you’re talking about travels, so that cannot be so. This is also a solution.

    So, unlike Todt, Sulayem admits 23 races is too much without staff rotation, but only the race director is rotated? Surely, if human fatigue and the amount of travelling is a problem for the race director, it’s also a problem for the other staff working in F1, for the FIA and the teams. Teams cannot realistically rotate all of their trackside staff, and are under no obligation to do any staff rotation at all. If the FIA president knows the calendar is taking a huge toll on staff in F1, why is he only doing something about one position, while doing nothing not about the other staff or the length of the calendar in general?
    I get the feeling he didn’t quite think this statement through.

    1. The teams certainly can rotate their staff. They just choose not to.
      The team is the employer in that instance – not the FIA. It’s their HR issue to manage.

      1. They can rotate mechanics and other less specialized positions, and some teams do it to an extent. The budget cap, however, puts more pressure than ever on the teams not to do it, because double-staffing to allow for this rotation takes money away from car development.
        Mercedes have proposed mandating staff rotation to ensure it happens, but as of now it’s still entirely up to the teams. Teams shouldn’t have to voluntarily sacrifice competitiveness for the sake of their staff. The right course of action should just be mandatory, as it is in other industries. As the governing body, it’s the FIA’s responsibility to regulate things like this.
        You also cannot just rotate senior positions and some highly specialized positions. Some people have to attend every race, and the only way to ease the burden on them is to reduce the number of races.

        1. Teams shouldn’t have to voluntarily sacrifice competitiveness for the sake of their staff.

          I completely disagree. The FIA isn’t the law, and has no legal authority to tell teams how to manage their HR.
          A good team manages their HR well without being told how to do it – it’s one of the many factors that leads to their success.
          If a team chooses their priorities poorly, they should be punished for it with their performance – and only with their performance.

          The right course of action should just be mandatory, as it is in other industries.

          The law applies to all racing team businesses already. The same laws apply to race teams as they do to the cosmetics store, the supermarket and the petrol station.

          Some people have to attend every race

          Nope. Not even the drivers.
          Everyone is replaceable and rotatable.

    2. With the dual role Masi and Charlie played, they often had to travel more than the teams – certifying and evaluating new facilities like Abu Dhabi required multiple trips by Masi last year, for example.

      (23 races is still too many though – I don’t want that many as a fan! Devalues each one of them)

  2. It’d be great if they were honest and just said that Masi was replaced to placate certain powerful stakeholders.
    There was absolutely no reason why they couldn’t have just added a second Race Director beside Masi.
    If they think that Masi ‘broke’ the rules, then shouldn’t he be lightly penalised, fined or whatever and returned to his position, just as the competitors are?
    What they’ve done is effectively DSQ him and revoke his licence. Bit harsh. Actually, way too harsh.
    And now they are starting from scratch all over again. Their new staff and system have already missed a bunch of track limits violations.

    So, what’s actually changed in F1?
    Nothing. It’s going to be just as inconsistent as it was before.

  3. “I said, ‘what’s that, It looks like a theatre?. And they said, this is actually a race control, but virtual. I said, ‘why don’t we have one?’

    We’ve been shown race support room footage many times in the last decade and sometimes live in races as a standard facility in what constitutes a F1 team base.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uAN0YoiUT0
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3ktWeco5qs

  4. What about asterisk (*) in FIA’s webpage and every other F1 webpage and book,
    that Max’s title is gifted to him by Michael Masi making multiple errors in Abu Dhabi GP?
    It’s a must if FIA wants at least some credibility!

  5. I’m a LH fan, I believe massi should have been given a chance under the current new system..

    1. Nope .. Sorry those screw ups were just a tad too large for my liking. You hold a very important position and their are some very black and white calls you must make. He screwed up two of them giving a rather large advantage to one team in a championship deciding race.

      Decisions have consequenses

  6. Those pressures were clearly evident by Interlagos, when the first really bizarre decision was taken not to penalize MV for going way off track to defend (here Masi and the stewards are both implicated). FIA needs to have some kind of mechanism that would have recognized that the race officials had failed a ‘stress test’ and implemented some remedial reaction. Instead, Masi went into the final races with even more pressure piled on him, exacerbated and exploited by the two rival teams for the championship (both unpleasantly exploitative in their behaviour as they vied with each other with Masi in the middle). I’m presuming that scenario at least has now been addressed.

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