Sulayem explains the stop to Masi: “We have protected him from stress and pressure”

The 2022 F1 championship is ready to kick off in a few hours in Bahrain. The Clerk of the Course, after three years, will no longer be Michael Masi. Niels Wittich will start his relay race with Eduardo Freitas in this alternation established by the new president of the FIA ​​Mohammed Ben Sulayem to avoid exposing a single person to a considerable burden of responsibility. Yesterday the Federation issued the definitive report linked to the investigation conducted to verify what went wrong in the chaotic and frantic final of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that awarded Max Verstappen, world champion. The statement underlined that Masi committed a human error made in good faith and that the result of the Grand Prix is ​​valid and incontrovertible.

Ben Sulayem also explained why the FIA ​​has decided to remove Michael Masi from Race Direction in F1: “We have decided to release him from office to protect him from the pressure and stress that has gripped him in recent months – the words of Sulayem reported by the British newspaper racefans.net – we are grateful for his efforts over the last three years and we are in contact with him to find a new position within the FIA ​​because he is a competent and valuable person ”. According to Sulayem, the decision to entrust the Race Direction to a team and not to a single individual is a winning one: “You can’t be alone in such a delicate role, in fact we also called Herbie Blash to help the Clerk of the Course. The idea of ​​the remote garage to help the Commissioners came to me in January when I visited the stables. I wondered in front of their remote garage to support the men on the track why we didn’t have one too. We inaugurated it yesterday, it is already in action this race weekend ”.