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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is pleased the FIA followed its Safety Car rules correctly at the end of the Italian Grand Prix, following the controversial conclusion to last year’s world championship.
Lewis Hamilton lost the 2021 drivers championship when he was passed by Max Verstappen on the final lap of the season. Verstappen was able to make the pass after the FIA F1 race director Michael Masi organised a final lap restart in violation of the rules.
Masi, who lost his job over the controversy, was accused by some of breaking the rules to arrange the restart in order to create a more dramatic finish to the race.
Today’s race at Monza finished behind the Safety Car as an operation to move Daniel Ricciardo’s stricken McLaren out of the way took longer than expected. Wolff praised race director Niels Wittich for following the rules correctly and ending the race behind the Safety Car.
“I’m really satisfied to see that there is a race director and colleagues that apply the regs against the pressure of the media and the pressure of the fans and everybody to just be in breach of the regulations,” he said. “At least Abu Dhabi, in that sense, gave the FIA more robust confidence to apply the regulations.”
Wolff said there can be no doubt the FIA’s Safety Car procedure was followed correctly. “It’s very clear,” he said. “There is rules and they are written down. And from my perspective, whether I am Abu Dhabi, traumatised or not, these rules have been followed to the dot today.
“There was a car on track, there was marshals and a crane out there. That’s why they didn’t let anybody overtake. And then there was not enough time to restart the race once all the cars caught up.”
However Wolff said he would not be against changing the rules to give the race director more flexibility to avoid concluding grands prix behind the Safety Car.
“If one is not happy with the regulations and you want to have a big bang show and two laps of racing and mayhem, I’m absolutely up for it,” he said. “But they need to change the regulations. So I don’t think we should complain about anything that happened because this is the rules.”
Wolff believes it wouldn’t be difficult to alter the rules in that way. “I think we need to say ‘do we want to have a race finishing under green?’ And then reverse-engineer it from there.
“So you can say…
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