If the message Masi wants to send to the drivers is that he wants to let them race, then Hamilton’s move was fully legit and not worthy of a penalty. The only difference between the two moves was that in Brazil, Hamilton backed out of trying to make the corner. In England, Verstappen did not. Masi seems to be policing things like a basketball ref policing an intentional charging foul: “If you stand there and get hit, I’ll give the other guy a penalty, but if you move out of the way, he’ll score and I won’t say anything.” The only problem is we’re not dealing with a seven-foot center, we’re dealing with multimillion-dollar, 200-mph missiles with real live human beings at the controls.
The argument can be (and was) made that a 10-second penalty for Hamilton that had no effect on the outcome of the race wasn’t really much of a penalty. Masi’s response to that was that he does not look at the outcome of an incident to determine the severity of a penalty. But clearly, that is not true. If it was, Norris’s incident with Perez in Austria should have gone unpenalized. This is where Masi’s inconsistency starts showing.
The on-track calls weren’t the only questionable ones Masi made this year. The decision to run two laps at Spa in the pouring rain under the safety car and call it a “race” was one of the more bizarre things I have ever seen in F1. With the weather worsening, there was no way that any consideration should have been given to start the race. And don’t get me started about letting Perez back into the “race” after he crashed on the formation lap on the way to the grid. Lest you think that running the two-lap “race” at Spa was silly but inconsequential, let me remind you that the only reason Verstappen came into the last race owning the tiebreaker of most race wins over Hamilton was due to Masi’s call here—handing Verstappen the win, although no real racing laps had been run.
The Championship on the Line
All of this leads us to last weekend’s championship race in Abu Dhabi. All of the pundits around the world were expecting an on-track clash between the two championship protagonists. All were calling for the race to be decided on track and not in the steward’s office. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened, although not in a way that anyone could have predicted.
Things got off to an inauspicious start for the race director only a half a lap into the race when Verstappen dove down to the inside of Hamilton at Turn 6. Hamilton left the door wide open but then decided to try to stay around the outside of the late-braking Verstappen. Assuming that Verstappen was going to, well, you know… be Verstappen and drive him off the circuit, Hamilton took the cut off and rejoined the track still in the lead. Except Verstappen, to the surprise of pretty much everyone, didn’t leave the racing circuit, managing to keep two wheels on the track. At that point in time, the corner should have been Verstappen’s and Hamilton should have been required to give the position back. He didn’t.