Although we have seen a lot in recent years, the FIA has reached a deep bottom in the race for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and turned the elite motorsport class into a complete farce in the middle of the epic fight for the world title.
Verstappen started badly after the restart of the race from the best starting position and Hamilton broke into the lead, but the Dutchman braked extremely late and with an aggressive maneuver almost collided with the Mercedes driver. The Red Bull racer thus retained the lead, while Esteban Ocon broke through to second place ahead of Hamilton. In the back, Sergio Perez and Nikita Mazepin collided into the wall, and the race was again suspended with a red flag.
During the break, we witnessed an extremely unusual event, when the Red Bull team agreed with race director Michael Masi on the radio that Verstappen would start the race behind Hamilton if Ocon starts from the pole position. It is a strange thing that we have not seen so far, and the starting order was arranged between Masi and Red Bull.
At the same time, we have to ask ourselves why the stewards, who should take care to respect the rules are present at the race at all if everything can be agreed on the radio by Masi himself. It is an extremely suspicious act that casts a bad light on the whole sport and turns the fight for the world title into burlesque. Nothing to blame or ought, Ocon then found himself in pole position and Verstappen moved to third place.
Most troubling of all was the vocabulary itself used in the dialogue by Red Bull representatives and Massi himself. All in all, it looked like a market, where they are arguing about who will offer the most. He gave the impression to the masses that he did not want to burden the stewards with the matter, even though deciding on controversial situations should be their main and almost only task.
However, this was clearly not the case this time. Who knows why they didn’t even investigate Valtteri Bottas ’distinctly unsportsmanlike maneuver, which deliberately slowed down by eight seconds while the first safety car was on track, thus providing a safe advantage for Mercedes’ double stop.
The stewards joined the race only somewhere in the middle, and before that, apparently, their work was done by Masi. After the race itself, the FIA washed away their hands with a 10-second penalty for Verstappen, which did not offend anyone, as Verstappen retained second place. We’ve seen a lot in Formula One, but we’ve never seen anything like that.
The race in Saudi Arabia has been irregular in many ways and should be repeated, or even annulled. The sport, in which billions are invested, has been trivialized to such an extent that the race director is trading for positions on the track according to the system of who gives more. Masi should have resigned after the disastrous races in Imola and Spa, but this time he went much further. If he does not leave after this fiasco, FIA President Jean Todt himself should show him the door. What we watched in Jeddah was a complete farce that turned this year’s spectacular fight for the world title into a bad joke. When the FIA and teams bargain for starting places, yes it is clear that F1 is truly fu****.
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