Toto Wolff was asked again about the 2021 season finale in Abu Dhabi. The Mercedes F1 boss was able to make a cold judgment on the error of Michael Masi who had offered the title to Max Verstappen, and on what Lewis Hamilton and the team felt after this injustice.
“I felt angry, not depressed or sad, just angry that an individual could take away an eighth championship from the best driver in the world with a bad decision.” Wolff said on the High Performance Podcast.
“But you have to put things in context: there are dictators in the world and politicians who cause so much pain that it is in no way comparable to losing the eighth title for Lewis or for us as a team. team.”
“But a person’s anger at that time, but even Lewis learned to manage his emotions very strongly and after a few days he was in a correct state of mind. But we still feel it because of the injustice that happened that day.”
Michael Masi was already very controversial for various decisions since his arrival at the head of race management. We particularly remember the lack of responsiveness on neutralizations, or the restart of a session in Türkiye while a crane was on the track.
Wolff had already noted and notified Masi on several occasions of the errors he had made, to no avail. Given the help he tried to provide, he considers Abu Dhabi’s mistake unforgivable.
“I really tried to talk to Michael and guide him throughout the year. I tried to tell him ‘listen, I’ve been in this sport a long time, listen to the drivers, don’t get stubborn in your decisions.”
“I tried to do it for the good of the sport and obviously for us as a team to not be vulnerable to situations that could be totally detrimental, so in that sense what happened is inexcusable .”
“I know how he feels and I know it’s not good, but he could have been thinking about it all year and there were people, not just me, who were trying to support him in the right way .”
“Sometimes you have to admit that someone does what they want or makes their own decisions, then I don’t worry about it anymore. I think about it mainly because Lewis deserved to be the greatest of all time with eight world championship titles.”
As he has already said, Wolff regrets not having called Jos Verstappen to check on Max after his Silverstone accident: “These guys had been fighting wheel to wheel, not only on the first lap, but they had been fighting all season, and I think that’s when both decided not to give in this turn.”
“And it ended up in a situation where, luckily, Max wasn’t hurt. I said this before, I could have reacted in a better way, because I heard one of the Red engineers Bull said he was fine, I said to myself ‘check the box Max is fine’, and we won the race, without him scoring any points.”
“So it was important to bounce back in the championship. I felt like the driving wasn’t always impeccable and, in retrospect, I should have picked up the phone and called Jos to ask if he was okay. Jos would have clearly told me what he thought about this situation, but that’s fine.”
“But I should have, as a father, called the pilot’s father and asked him, which I didn’t do. There were many other cases that year that were not in compliance with the standards that we all expect of each other.”
