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F1 journalists Scott Mitchell, Mark Hughes and Edd Straw voice concern about the FIA doing a “full and thorough and transparent investigation” of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The FIA has started its investigation into the ending of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and the controversial decisions that were made by race director Michael Masi, which allowed Max Verstappen to easily pick up the race win and the world title.
On The Race’s F1 Podcast prominent F1 journalist Scott Mitchell voiced his concern about the integrity of the investigation.
“My concern is what confidence we can have in the FIA to actually go as far as admitting fault where there was actually fault,” Scott said.
“I expect a compromise. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be anything good that comes from it, but I suspect they’ll find a way to stick with and validate what happened in Abu Dhabi.
“They’ll stand by Masi’s actions and the stewards by sticking to this interpretation of Article 15.3 in the sporting regulations, which gives the race director overriding authority on many issues including the use of the safety car, which is basically the justification for him doing what he wants with the end of the safety car periods.
“I think what they’ll do is say that ‘the rules allowed this to happen, but we recognise that it’s clearly caused a problem’ – they said before that we all just misunderstood this – so therefore, they’ll tighten up a few rules and change a few rules to make sure this can’t happen again.
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“And that way, what they’ll do is not admit they actually did anything wrong but find a way to say ‘we could do this better in the future’.
“I don’t think that is a full and thorough and transparent investigation. What you really need to be getting into is just point blank, ‘was this handled incorrectly or not?’
“I think it’s a bit naive and unrealistic to actually expect the FIA to do this, because organisations that investigate themselves tend to close ranks a little bit,” Mitchell concluded.
His opinion was backed by fellow journalist Mark Hughes.
“It’s already gone wrong, and to actually go through it and say, ‘yeah, this was actually wrong, it was the wrong call by the race director and the wrong call by the stewards on appeal afterwards’ would therefore trigger the next question, ‘so the result is invalid, then?’,” Mark said.
“You’re then getting into disastrous PR, you can’t change the outcome of the world championship. It’s done. It went wrong. And it went wrong in the way it did. And it’s now done.
“So they can only do a damage limitation, and I would expect it to be very much like what Scott has outlined.
“It would be, ‘yeah, it was actually technically correct under the rules that were in place at the time, but we recognise it wasn’t very satisfactory so we’re going to change these rules’,” Hughes concluded.
Edd Straw added that Mercedes will be concerned with actual actions the FIA will take to prevent this kind of situation from happening again.
“The really key thing, and this was clear from the moment the whole situation arose, is that for the long term the problem is tackled,” Edd said.
“And I’m sure Mercedes will be pragmatic about it. What I think Mercedes mean when Toto Wolff says they want to hold the FIA to account is they want to make sure there are changes.
“Wolff’s got a big thing about it, he’s spoken before about governance and good practice. He talks about in the business world, there are very clear governance structures in place for the way businesses act and the way things are dealt with.
“He feels that it has been too fast and loose in Formula 1. He said this long before what happened in in Abu Dhabi, but obviously Abu Dhabi has hyped up the whole thing.
“I’m sure that Wolff and Mercedes, their mindset is ‘we want to see as a good situation for the longer term’,” Straw concluded.
