After Lewis Hamilton’s controversial loss of the World Championship title, Toto Wolff, Mercedes chief, was furious at Michael Masi from FIA.
Max Verstappen won the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix by beating Hamilton after he was in a safety car.
Wolff got angry and said: “We must go back to where we were before.”
Toto Wolff was angry with Michael Masi, after Lewis Hamilton’s loss of the World Championship title
Masi replied, “It’s called motor racing.”
Hamilton and Verstappen finished level in points entering the thrillingly poised final race.
Hamilton made an impressive start and appeared poised to win glory before the drama’s end.
Wolff claimed that it was necessary to return to the previous lap, but Masi said: “It is called a motor-race.”
Hamilton was defeated by Verstappen who won the World Championship title
Hamilton seemed shocked at the way events unfolded after the race.
The 36-year old still took time to compliment his opponent.
Verstappen, a Red Bull driver, won his first title in the world at the end of an entertaining season.
Christian Horner, the principal of Red Bull Racing, said of Masi’s decision: ‘We were screaming at him ‘let em race’, that’s what we’ve been talking about all these years, let them race. The championship was down to the very last lap. And it took great strategy to get to that pit stop and to pick up that soft set. Then it was Max who made it all happen.
Horner said that Wolff is someone he respects, despite fierce competition between Mercedes-Benz and Red Bull.
He said: ‘It’s been high stakes this year, an intense competition, teams gone head to head. It’s about the guys and girls back in the factories who have put so much in, through the pandemic and so on.
Although we have our ups and downs, I respect Toto as well. It feels like the right result that the championships were split and we’ll come back and try and do it all again next year.’