Toto Wolff has now admitted that not even christian Horner who was his fiercest adversary has him as riled as former race director Michael Massa who he claims decided the 2021 F1 drivers’ title race against his driver Lewis Hamilton
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has reignited his feud with former Formula 1 race director Michael Masi, describing him as a “lunatic” nearly four years after the infamous 2021 title decider. The Austrian also accused the ex-FIA official of having “destroyed the record of the greatest champion of all time,” referring to Lewis Hamilton.
The bitter comments recall the fallout from the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, one of the most controversial moments in F1 history. Hamilton appeared on course to claim a record-breaking eighth world title after dominating most of the race, only for a late safety car period to turn the outcome on its head.
Wolff’s iconic moment of outrage
A crash late in the race by Williams Nikolas Latiffi brought out the safety car, with Hamilton comfortably leading Max Verstappen. However, Masi made the unusual decision to allow only certain lapped cars to un-lap themselves, then hurriedly ended the safety car period before the final lap — ensuring the championship would be decided under racing conditions.
The call left Hamilton defenceless on heavily worn tyres, while Verstappen, armed with fresh rubber, swept past on the final lap to clinch his first World Championship — and deny Hamilton what would have been a historic eighth crown.
Wolff’s outrage in the Mercedes garage that day became an enduring image of the chaotic finale. Television cameras caught him slamming his headset onto the desk in fury after radioing Masi with the now-iconic words: “Michael, this is so not right.”
Yet given that most passions have faded over the issue, its time to re-examine what happened in Abu Dhabi from a dispassionate point of view, given a number of issues unknown at the time have since come to light.
Mercedes built the most dominant F1 cars in history
Firstly, Toto’s claim that Lewis Hamilton is the greatest driver of all time will as with all such debates receive a hostile reception from F1 students. Mercedes had built the most dominant F1 cars in history between 2014 and 2021 and the proof is in the statistics.
The Mercedes team at that time had competed in just around a quarter of F1 Grand Prix of the historic Ferrari team, yet during that era delivered a record number of 1-2 finishes demonstrating even Hamilton’s number two drivers were ahead of their competitors.
At the time Ferrari had entered 1030 Grand Prix claiming 84 1-2 finishes. Mercedes had started a mere 229 Grand Prix but their 1-2 finish tally was 60. In percentage terms this puts Mercedes way at the top of the table for this kind of result with just over a 26%/ of their races finishing in this fashion. For F1’s longest competing team, this is just over 8%.
To this day, other than Mercedes, Ferrari have the best percentage record of 1-2 results and it stands at 7.78% whilst Mercedes – following four years in the doldrums – has fallen to 18.8%. Mercedes also top the table in the number of 1-2 finishes I a season as in 2015 they had 12 from 19 weekends and in 2014 they claimed 11 from the same length of season.
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Wolff’s bold claim unsustainable
Across 2014, 2015-16 and 2019, the Brackley based F1 team racked up five consecutive 1-2 finishes on three occasions, the most by any team in F1 history. To be honest the statistics go on and on, but the fact Mercedes won an incredible eight consecutive constructor titles between 2014 and 2021 says it all. They and Hamilton had the most dominant cars in F1 history for the best part of a decade.
So for Toto Wolff to claim Michael Masi “destroyed the record of the greatest champion of all time” is a big reach. Hamilton’s greatness must be seen in the light that he has driven far more uber dominant cars than any other F1 driver in history.
In 2020, there had been controversy in Bahrain, when the Grand Prix had finished in an anti-climatic fashion under the safety car following a Perez engine failure and a marshal running across a live track. This had led to pressure from the teams for the F1 race director to sure as best as possible that this kind of race finish was not repeated.
At the Belgium Grand Prix in 2021, the race again finished under the safety car after just two laps, again causing unrest in the F1 paddock. With the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix being the deciding event of the entire season, Masi decided to use his powers as race director to ensure there was at least one lap of racing after the late Latiffi led safety car.
Team’s had petitioned for no safety car F1 finishes
Knowing the battle was between Hamilton and Verstappen he allowed just the lapped cars between the two title rivals to Dunlap themselves before calling in the safety car to provide a one lap final showdown between the protagonists.
Red Bull had pitted Verstappen earlier in the safety car period for fresh rubber, which Mercedes could also have done without risking track position. Yet complacency within the strategy team led to the view that the race wold not be restarted and so they failed to equip Hamilton for that eventuality.
Of course it was obvious at the restart it was only a matter of time before Verstappen would cruise by his better rival to claim his maiden F1 drivers’ championship. Hamilton even ran completely off track in his attempted defence but was easily passed by the Red Bull driver who claimed a remarkable victory and set up one of the latest finishes to an F1 title race.
Toto Wolff has refused to countenance the fact that Mercedes should have switched Lewis onto fresh rubber – as Red Bull did with Verstappen – and remains bitter over the unusual actions of the then F1 race director who had been repeatedly petitioned by the teams to not conclude races behind the safety car.
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F1 report upheld F1 race directors’ “overriding authority”
The subsequent FIA report into the events in Abu Dhabi in 2021 found that “the Formula 1 stakeholders (FIA, Formula 1, teams and drivers) preference to end races under green-flag racing conditions, rather than behind a safety car, when safe to do so.” Further it concludes “that the Race Director was acting in good faith … the teams had accepted that, although their preference remained to finish a race under green-flag conditions, they would accept finishing under the safety car ‘if for safety reasons it is not possible to withdraw [it]’.”
There was no issue of safety in withdrawing the safety car that night. The report did conclude there was no unanimity amongst the teams on how to handle the variety of situations where a late safety car needed to be deployed, but crucially upheld the F1 race director’s “overriding authority” (in this case Masi) under Article 15.3 of the sporting regulations, meaning teams cannot demand specific procedural changes in-race.
Toto Wolff may wish to continue to bang his head against a brick wall, but the matter is concluded. Michael Masi was exonerated and Lewis Hamilton failed to beat the record number of driver titles set by Michael Schumacher back in 2004, despite driving many of F1’s most dominant cars in history.
Greatest F1 drivers of all time have to include the likes of Jim Clarke whose pole and win ratios were off the charts, Graham Hill who won motorsports triple crown in Monaco, Le Mans and at the Indy500. Driving the most dominant cars in F1 history hardly qualifies its pilot to even be enjoined in the debate.
Ferrari issued a ‘gagging order’ to Massa over “crashgate”
Felipe Massa is currently pursuing a petition in the UK high court against the FIA and various individuals for a cover up which would have seen him – not Lewis Hamilton – named as the Formula One 2008 drivers’ champion.
The background to the claim is based on activity which occurred at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix – F1’s first ever night race – with Renault running Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet Jnr as their drivers.
Under pressure to save his F1 career, Piquet later admitted that the team’s principal Flavio Briatore and technical director Pat Symonds instructed him to deliberately crash to benefit his team mate’s race….. READ MORE
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I call bullshit on your article about Abu Dhabi 2021. Masi (not Massi, nor even Massa !) failed to follow the rules about unlapping all the lapped cars before ending the safety car. It was written in black and white, and he did something else. Actually I’ve never understood why they should be unlapped – it just makes the whole process long and unweildy. But it was the rule, and he did something else. End of.
I quite agree