Former Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has admitted he put pressure on ex-Formula 1 race director Michael Masi to restart the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The 2021 F1 season provided one of the most controversial and contentious climaxes in history as Max Verstappen snatched the world title away from Lewis Hamilton on the final lap of the Abu Dhabi finale.
Verstappen, on fresher tyres, passed Hamilton after Masi rushed through the safety car restart, only allowing a handful of cars to unlap themselves. Verstappen overtook Hamilton to deny the Briton what would have been a record-breaking eighth world championship.
Horner and then Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley applied pressure on Masi to get the race going again.
Verstappen used a tyre advantage to beat Hamilton in a one-lap shootout in Abu Dhabi
“Why aren’t we getting these lapped cars out of the way? You only need one racing lap,” Horner was heard asking Masi over the radio before the restart.
Horner admitted to directly pressurising Masi for the first time publicly in his new book, Drive.
"The cars crawled around the track. When Max returned from the pit lane, the field had bunched up, and five lapped cars separated him from Lewis,” Horner documents.
"Shortly afterwards, as Latifi’s buckled Williams was removed from the track and the debris and shattered carbon fibre was cleared away, instructions arrived from race control. The cars dividing Max from Lewis would not have to unlap. My heart sank.
"That meant that Max would have to pass all five cars before getting to Lewis, which was impossible in one racing lap.
"The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and by extension an entire season, was being concluded in the most unsatisfying manner. I couldn’t understand the decision.
"The watching world wanted to see Max and Lewis go head to head in a title decider, not crawl to an underwhelming finish. Anything else was a disappointment.
"I decided to apply some more pressure on race control. ‘Come on, Michael, we need to get this race going; why aren’t we getting these lapped cars out the way?’
"‘It’ll be such a shame to end everything under a safety. The lapped cars should unlap. Let’s race.’"
In an interview with the High Performance Podcast, Horner added: “It only became apparent to me at Barcelona that year, that when they started to broadcast the communications with the race director, that Toto had been speaking directly to Michael Masi.
Hamilton congratulates Horner after the race
© XPB Images
“Hang on, that’s not on? You’re putting pressure on the referee here. So I was like to our team manager, ‘get me on the line’, because I never spoke to Charlie Whiting in 15 years that he was there. It was always through the team manager. So then you start. Of course, if you can put pressure on and defend your position.
“So that was ratcheting up through that year. We had flashpoints at Silverstone, at Budapest, Monza, there were these real flashpoints. You get to that final race and we took our chances.
“The race director says that there’s going to be no unlapped cars and then he changes his mind. Of course we’re pushing hard, ‘this is not the way to finish the championship’ and there was more than enough time to unlap all of the cars.
“He made the decision, which was within his remit, as per the regulations to be able to do, but it had never been done before, to allow the cars between Max and Lewis to unlap.
“It wasn’t our fault but we’re in a position where we’ve got this one lap to have a crack at it, and if anyone is going to deliver you on a lap like that, it’s Max. What happened, happened.”
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