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Formula 1 race director Michael Masi explains Toto Wolff’s radio message to race control asking them to do something about Nikita Mazepin holding up Lewis Hamilton.
During the Spanish Grand Prix, while Lewis Hamilton was approaching the Haas of Nikita Mazepin, who was a lap down from him, Toto Wolff radioed race director Michael Masi and said: “Michael, blue flags! Blue flags! Michael, this guy makes us lose the position”.
The surprising part was that for the first time we could all hear this on the live broadcast. Haas team principal Guenther Steiner later said Wolff wanted to “show who is in command” and added he was “publicity seeking”.
Now Masi explains why we could all hear the message, and adds it is not something that Wolff does on a regular basis.
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“To be fair, I very rarely hear from Toto on the race control radio,” said Masi.
“However, one of the innovations the FIA has worked together with F1 – and actually came together after an F1 Commission meeting last year – is so they could hear, as part of the broadcast, the communications between the race control and the teams, which is a regular part of what we do operationally.
“From that perspective, Saturday was the first time it started so the F1 Group, through their broadcast, have been doing some trials in the background of seeing what that is like.
“All the teams were advised and the weekend was the first time it had gone live to air,” concluded F1’s race director.
