The FIA Method 1 race director tends to get blamed for issues which don’t essentially fall inside their area.
Penalty selections, to take one instance, are a very frequent trigger for confusion amongst followers. The race director can – and sometimes does – question incidents which they really feel must be checked out. However it’s the stewards who do the looking-at.
It’s the stewards who resolve whether or not to penalise a driver and, if that’s the case, how. Nonetheless, the race director typically will get it within the ear from those that disapprove of selections they didn’t make.
That a lot was clear within the response from some on social media yesterday to the information of Niels Wittich’s shock departure from the position.
However the timing of the announcement – three rounds earlier than the tip of the season, with each championships hanging within the steadiness – invited the interpretation this was not a long-planned change. It was hanging, too, that the information was hurried out shortly earlier than Method One Administration confirmed particulars of its widely-teased new pre-season launch occasion.
So, few had been shocked when, quickly afterwards, got here phrase Wittich hadn’t chosen to maneuver on, because the FIA’s assertion claimed, with the intention to “pursue new alternatives”.
The F1 race director’s duty is to make sure the protected and easy operating of grands prix as laid down by the FIA’s guidelines. Wittich seems to have carried out this properly, actually in comparison with the usual set by his predecessor, whose error throughout his ultimate race in cost plunged F1 into disaster because it arguably swung the end result of the 2021 world championship.
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F1 race director is a uniquely demanding position, the place selections are taken in cut up seconds and the stakes, as Michael Masi found, are extraordinarily excessive. He has been thrust into the position at nearly zero discover three seasons prior when his predecessor Charlie Whiting died on the eve of the 2019 championship. However although Masi finally misplaced his job by triggering an issue which introduced F1 into disrepute, different troubling incidents additionally occured on his watch.
Sergio Perez had a near-miss with a pair of marshals at Monaco in 2019. The next yr the same incident occured involving his staff mate Lance Stroll and others at Imola. At Istanbul that yr a qualifying session started in moist circumstances whereas marshals had been nonetheless on the observe recovering a automotive.
The FIA’s subsequent investigation into the farcical 2021 championship decider concluded Masi had change into over-stretched because of the calls for of his workload. It’s not laborious to see how this was the case amid the strains of two consecutive seasons badly disrupted by Covid-19.
F1’s rules needed to be extensively overhauled to permit races to go forward amid a pandemic. A string of occasions had been cancelled and calendars compressed with a number of double- and triple-headers. Masi’s time between races was consumed by conducting inspections of a sequence of tracks which had been added to the calendar, together with two new venues within the run-up to Abu Dhabi.
Added to that was the fierce rivalry between Crimson Bull and Mercedes as Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton scrapped for the championship. Masi was repeatedly referred to as upon to make selections which doubtlessly had large implications for the title battle – proper as much as the essential one he acquired mistaken.
So, within the aftermath of one in every of F1’s largest controversies for years, the sequence discovered itself needing a brand new race director. It settled on two: Wittich from Germany’s DTM sequence and his WEC counterpart Eduardo Freitas, who rotated the job between them over the 22-round 2022 season.
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On the time FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem indicated the governing physique would like to rotate race administrators. Wittich lined the primary 5 races that yr, then frequently swapped with Freitas.
Nonetheless after the Japanese Grand Prix, the place the FIA was criticised by drivers after Pierre Gasly encountered a restoration car on the circuit throughout a Security Automobile interval, the governing physique introduced Wittich would cowl the ultimate races. He has remained in cost since, and till yesterday there was no signal he was about to get replaced. The scenario may hardly be extra totally different to Masi’s departure, which was broadly anticipated for 2 months earlier than phrase got here.
However Wittich is way from the primary notable title inside the FIA to depart over the previous 12 months, nonetheless. Amongst those that have left in that point are sporting director Steve Nielsen, technical director Tim Goss, chief govt Natalie Robyn and the top of its fee for ladies, Deborah Mayer.
F1’s new race director is Rui Marques, who took cost of Method 2’s occasions in the identical weekend Wittich first ran an F1 race. Marques didn’t seem to anticipate a transfer as much as F1 was imminent in an interview earlier this yr. “In three years’ time, if I’m nonetheless doing what I’m doing right now, I’m more than pleased,” he stated. “My profession is shifting a bit [towards] the only seater half in Method 2 and Method 3, I’m more than pleased to proceed this path.”
Wittich deserves credit score for the efficient however normally low-key job he did. One key change he carried out got here instantly after his appointment within the type of a clarification of the principles on observe limits.
Beneath Masi, F1 not solely enforced totally different guidelines at totally different corners on the identical observe, however even totally different guidelines at totally different periods on the identical weekend. Wittich’s insistence that the white line must be the border in every single place lastly compelled F1 to start out implementing efficient options to one in every of its most pointless issues this yr.
However arguably Wittich’s larger energy as a race director was that, in contrast to his predecessor, he by no means allowed himself to change into the story. That’s the objective his substitute, F1’s fifth race director in six years, ought to try for.
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