Almost 4 months following Max Verstappen became world champion in Abu Dhabi, in the controversial 2021 F1 finale, Toto Wolff, the director of Mercedes F1 and Lewis Hamilton launches a new attack on the director of racing, Michael Masi.
For the Austrian, the former race director has still not recognized his wrongs and calls him a man “disrespectful” who believed “know better than others”and despised pilots regardless of criticism.
“It’s quite interesting because I had lunch with Masi on the Wednesday before the Abu Dhabi race, and I said to him ‘I really want to tell you, without condescension, that you have to take the criticism into account’. I told him to ‘grow up’ like Lewis does every day, but that he was ‘like a guy who always seems to know better than the rest’,” reveals Wolff today to the PA news agency.
“It wasn’t regarding influencing him, but really regarding giving my honest opinion that he shouldn’t block outside opinions and consider them just wrong.”
“You hear the pilots and how the briefings were conducted by Masi and some of the pilots said it was almost disrespectful the way he treated some of them.”
“He was just putting himself above any comment and even today he didn’t properly realize he had done anything wrong.”
“He was a liability for F1 because everyone was talking regarding Abu Dhabi and the race director, and the race director shouldn’t be someone people talk regarding, but someone who gets the job done. and makes sure the race is run according to the regulations.”
