Overriding Authority

0:00 Five cars, eighteen seconds, one lap

Abu Dhabi, the twelfth of December 2021. Lap fifty-seven of fifty-eight. A message appears on the screens of every team. Five lapped cars, and only those five, may overtake the safety car.

Those five were the cars between the leader, Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen.

Eighteen seconds later, a second message. Safety car in this lap.

One lap of racing was left. The two drivers fighting for the world championship had arrived in Abu Dhabi with exactly the same number of points. One lap later, Max Verstappen was world champion.

Two messages. Eighteen seconds. One lap.

0:44 Who decided who became world champion?

Mercedes filed two protests. That night, the stewards dismissed them. Three months later, the governing body itself wrote that a lap the rules required had not been run. Both documents still stand.

So this episode does not ask who deserved the title. It asks something simpler. Who decided who became world champion?

The rulebook answers in two words. Overriding authority. The files say more: one word that was later changed, one sentence from fourteen months earlier, and seven seconds that vanished thirty-two laps before the safety car.

To keep track, this episode keeps a ledger. One column for who raced for the title, and one for who decided it.

1:53 Level on 369.5: the season and the stewards

The 2021 season had twenty-two races. Lewis Hamilton drove for Mercedes, the team that had won every constructors' title since 2014. Max Verstappen drove for Red Bull.

Hamilton led after four races. Verstappen took over in Monaco. The championship lead changed hands five times. Over the year, Verstappen led six hundred and fifty-two laps, more than twice as many as Hamilton.

And again and again, the stewards were asked to decide what had happened between them.

At Silverstone in July, they touched on the first lap, at Copse corner. Verstappen went into the barrier. Red Bull's team principal, Christian Horner, said the impact measured fifty-one G. The stewards gave Hamilton a ten-second penalty. Car forty-four, they wrote, is judged predominantly at fault. Hamilton served the penalty and still won.

Red Bull asked for a review, with new evidence. The stewards turned it down. Some of the slides Red Bull submitted, they said, had not been discovered. They had been created for the review.

In Hungary, a crash at the first corner left Verstappen's car badly damaged, and Hamilton took back the championship lead. In Belgium, the race was stopped on the grounds of force majeure. The result was taken after a single lap, and half points were given.

At Monza in September, Verstappen's car ended up on top of Hamilton's. Both were out. This time the stewards found Verstappen predominantly to blame. His move, they wrote, came too late for him to have the right to racing room. Three places on the grid at the next race.

In Brazil, Hamilton was excluded from qualifying because his rear wing opened too far. He started the sprint last and the race tenth. On lap forty-eight, he tried to pass Verstappen for the lead around the outside of turn four. Both cars ran off the track, and Verstappen stayed ahead. The stewards' decision, posted by race control: no investigation necessary. Eleven laps later, Hamilton passed him anyway and won. Two days later, Mercedes asked for a review, citing new camera footage. The website The Race worked out that a five-second penalty would have dropped Verstappen to third, and cut his championship lead from fourteen points to eleven. The stewards denied the review, and compared not investigating to what other sports call play on.

In Saudi Arabia, one week before the final, Verstappen was told to give a position back. He slowed. Hamilton, by his own account, did not know why, and the two cars touched. The stewards found that Verstappen had braked suddenly, at two point four G, and called it erratic. Ten seconds. Hamilton won.

Earlier that night, during a red flag, the race director, Michael Masi, had offered Red Bull the chance to drop Verstappen behind Hamilton at the restart instead of going to the stewards. He would not call it a deal, he said afterwards. Horner called it a negotiation.

After twenty-one races, level.

If it stayed that way, the rules said, the title would go to the driver with more wins. That was Verstappen, nine to eight. So Hamilton had to finish ahead of him.

Before the final, Masi sent the teams his notes for the weekend. In them, he reminded everyone that the stewards could suspend a driver, or take away championship points, for an attempt to influence the result in a way contrary to sporting ethics.

The warning was addressed to teams and drivers alike.

Two drivers, level on points. And on the other side, the stewards, who had already settled four of the season's biggest arguments.

6:02 Fifty-seven laps: Pérez, tyres, the safety car

Yas Marina, Abu Dhabi. Fifty-eight laps, on a track that had been redesigned for that very race.

Verstappen started from pole. Hamilton, second, made the better start and led before the first corner. On the first lap, Verstappen dived down the inside at turn six. Hamilton ran off the track at the next corner and came back in front. Race control's message: no investigation necessary.

From there, Hamilton pulled away. Both made their first stop for hard tyres.

Then the other Red Bull came into play. Sergio Pérez had joined the team that year. He had been backed by Telmex, one of Carlos Slim's companies, since he was a teenager. And from twenty twenty-one, América Móvil, the telecoms group of the Mexican billionaire, was an official sponsor of Red Bull Racing. The amount was never published. Horner had said the team did not depend on the money Pérez could bring from Mexico.

Formula One's own website wrote that before the race, Pérez had made no secret that he would do everything in his power to help Verstappen. On lap twenty, he had not stopped yet, and he was leading. Hamilton caught him and went past. Pérez took the place straight back. For two laps, he held Hamilton up, while Verstappen closed in behind them. A gap of almost nine seconds shrank to less than two. Seven seconds, in two laps.

It was not enough. Hamilton got past and pulled away again. On lap thirty-six, a car stopped on the track, and a virtual safety car slowed the field. Verstappen came in for fresh hard tyres. Hamilton stayed out.

With six laps to go, Hamilton led by eleven point nine seconds. If the order held, Lewis Hamilton would be world champion.

Then, on lap fifty-three, Nicholas Latifi crashed at turn fourteen. At twenty-one minutes past six in the evening, the safety car came out.

Hamilton reached the pit entry first, so Mercedes had to choose first. By this channel's own calculation from the timing data, a stop would have brought him out level with Verstappen, within a second either way. Mercedes kept him out, and kept the lead. A stop, Mark Hughes wrote for Formula One the next day, would only have made Red Bull leave Verstappen out. On laps twenty and twenty-one, Pérez had taken seven seconds out of that lead. With those seven seconds, by the same calculation, and if nothing else had changed, a stop for fresh tyres would have brought Hamilton out in front, with time to spare.

Verstappen reached the pit entry fifteen seconds after Hamilton and came in for soft tyres. Not new ones, according to Pirelli, but thirty-seven laps younger than Hamilton's.

The marshals needed time. The brakes of the crashed car had caught fire. Lap after lap, the field ran behind the safety car. Hamilton at the front. Then five lapped cars, a full lap down. Then Verstappen.

On lap fifty-six, at six twenty-seven, race control sent what the FIA later called the standard message. Lapped cars will not be allowed to overtake.

If that held, Verstappen would start the last lap with five cars between him and Hamilton. Or the race would end behind the safety car. In his new book, Christian Horner writes that at that moment his heart sank.

On the track, Hamilton was leading. Off it, race control had made its first call. The lapped cars would stay where they were.

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9:58 Overriding authority: the last lap, the protests, the FIA report

From early that season, part of the radio between the teams and Masi's race control was broadcast.

Red Bull's team principal, Christian Horner, came on. Why aren't we getting these lapped cars out of the way, he asked. You only need one racing lap. His team manager, Jonathan Wheatley, added that then they would have a motor race on their hands.

In the FIA's transcript, Masi's replies are short. His main concern, he said, was to get the incident cleared. After that, one word, again and again. Understood.

At six thirty-one, a new message. The five lapped cars between Hamilton and Verstappen could overtake the safety car. Three more lapped cars, behind Verstappen, were not told to move. They stayed where they were.

Mercedes' team principal, Toto Wolff, came on the radio. Michael, this isn't right.

Eighteen seconds after the message about the five cars, the next one. Safety car in this lap.

The safety car came in at the end of that same lap. One lap. Verstappen on soft tyres. Hamilton on hard tyres that had done forty-four laps of racing.

Green flag. Verstappen started the lap less than half a second behind. At the hairpin, turn five, he went past and took the lead. Hamilton came back at him on the long straight. At turn nine, the FIA wrote, Hamilton almost touched him, trying to get back past. Verstappen stayed ahead. At the line, the gap was two point two five six seconds.

Max Verstappen was world champion.

Wolff came back on the radio and asked for the lap before to be reinstated. Masi's reply was reported that night: it was called a motor race, and they had gone car racing.

Within half an hour of the finish, Mercedes filed two protests. The second is the one that matters. It quoted article forty-eight point twelve of the sporting regulations.

Once the message lapped cars may now overtake has been sent, it says, any cars that have been lapped will be required to pass. And once the last lapped car has passed the leader, the safety car will return to the pits at the end of the following lap.

Not every lapped car had been let through, Mercedes argued. And the safety car had come in at the end of the same lap, not the following one. Had the rule been followed, Mercedes said, its car would have won the race. It asked the stewards to take the result from the lap before.

Red Bull's defence included three points. The first: any does not mean all. The rule said any cars that have been lapped. Mercedes read that as every lapped car. Red Bull read it as not necessarily all of them. The second: article forty-eight point thirteen overrides forty-eight point twelve. It says that once the message safety car in this lap is shown, the safety car comes in at the end of that lap. And the third: article fifteen point three gives the race director overriding authority over the use of the safety car. Red Bull also argued that even if all eight lapped cars had been let through, it would not have changed the outcome.

Masi was in the room. The purpose of the rule, he told the stewards, was to remove lapped cars that would interfere with the racing between the leaders. And it had long been agreed by all the teams, he said, that where possible it was highly desirable for a race to end under green, not behind a safety car.

At three minutes past eleven that night, the stewards decided. Article fifteen point three, they wrote, allows the race director to control the use of the safety car, including its withdrawal. Article forty-eight point twelve may not have been applied fully, as far as the extra lap was concerned. But forty-eight point thirteen overrides that. And changing the result now would be effectively shortening the race after the fact.

Protest dismissed.

One page of rules. Two readings. And, in the stewards' reading, one man with the authority to choose between them.

Three months later, the FIA published its own analysis. The race director, it said, had called the safety car in without it having completed an additional lap, as required by article forty-eight point twelve. The rules could be read in different ways. The lapped cars had been picked out by hand, and human error meant that not all of them had been let through. And Masi had acted in good faith, under immense pressure from the teams.

The results, it said, are valid, final, and cannot now be changed.

There is one more statement worth putting next to it. Fourteen months before Abu Dhabi, at the Eifel Grand Prix, Masi had explained why a safety car had stayed out so long. There is a requirement in the sporting regulations, he said then, to wave all lapped cars past.

The FIA's report also found that the decisions in Abu Dhabi had likely taken into account earlier discussions with the teams, which had made clear that they preferred races to finish under green flag conditions, not behind a safety car, when safe to do so.

So the governing body said three things at once. A required lap was skipped. The rules allowed more than one reading. And the man who made the call likely had in mind what the teams had said they wanted.

The ledger has an answer, at least on paper. The race director decided, and the stewards confirmed that the decision was his to make.

15:55 The week after: the appeal, the new president, later the budget cap

At twenty-two minutes past eleven that night, Mercedes told the stewards in writing that it intended to appeal. It had until the evening of the sixteenth of December to file. The FIA's court of appeal could have annulled or amended the result. It could not have ordered the race to be run again.

The appeal fell in the middle of a crowded week.

On the ninth of December, three days before the final, Formula One announced that the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix would stay on the calendar until 2030. The circuit's press release quoted Mohammed Ben Sulayem, then a vice-president of the FIA, and a candidate to lead it.

On the fifteenth, the FIA's world council said the arguments were tarnishing the image of the championship, and announced a detailed analysis.

On the sixteenth, Mercedes withdrew its appeal. We will hold the FIA accountable for this process, the team said. Explaining the decision, Toto Wolff said that the FIA can't really mark their own homework.

On the seventeenth, the FIA elected a new president. Mohammed Ben Sulayem, of the United Arab Emirates, won with sixty-one point six percent of the vote.

No document connects those dates, and this channel draws no line between them. They are simply the week in which the title was settled.

In February, the new president replaced Michael Masi. Two race directors would take turns, and the direct radio between the teams and the race director would be removed. In March, the rule itself was changed. Where it had said any cars, it now said all cars.

In July, Masi left the FIA and went home to Australia. Later that month he told an Australian newspaper that he had felt like the most hated man in the world, and that he had received death threats. Two outlets have since reported that an agreement with the FIA keeps him from discussing the decision itself.

And then, ten months after the final, came the money.

In October 2022, the FIA found that Red Bull had gone over the budget cap. For 2021. The title year.

The cap was one hundred and eighteen million pounds. Red Bull was over it by one point eight six million pounds, or one point six percent. Had a tax credit been treated correctly, the FIA added, the overspend would have been just over four hundred and thirty-two thousand pounds, or zero point three seven percent. A minor overspend, in the FIA's words, with no evidence of bad faith. The penalty was a fine of seven million dollars, and ten percent less time in the wind tunnel for a year.

Two versions again. Toto Wolff told an Italian newspaper that one or two million can already decide a championship, though he did not think the 2021 title could be revisited. Christian Horner said the team had zero benefit from it, in 2021 or in 2022.

A second championship was settled that night. Mercedes won the constructors' title, its eighth in a row. And Formula One pays its prize money to the teams mainly according to the constructors' table, not the drivers'.

Red Bull had the crown. Mercedes had the bigger share of the prize money that followed. By how much, nobody outside the contract can say.

The week after, Mercedes chose not to go to court. Within three months, the FIA rewrote the rule. The money, meanwhile, followed the other championship.

19:40 What it means now: Monza 2022 and the rule that stayed

Nine months after Abu Dhabi, at Monza, a race ended behind the safety car. The FIA said it had followed the procedures agreed with all the teams. Toto Wolff said the rules had been followed to the dot. Christian Horner said Red Bull did not want to win races under a safety car.

The teams discussed changing the rules so that a race could never end that way. In the end, said McLaren's team principal, Andreas Seidl, they voted to keep them as they were. As far as he remembered, every single team.

In the rules that followed, the race director kept his overriding authority over the use of the safety car.

This year, Masi's successor, Niels Wittich, said that what Masi did was within his authority. And this October, Christian Horner opened his memoir with that night in Abu Dhabi. In the book, he writes that he decided to apply some more pressure on race control. In a podcast, he said Masi's decision was within his remit, but that it had never been done before.

Michael Masi has not discussed the decision itself in any interview this channel could find.

The ledger is full. Two drivers raced for the title. Whether there would be one last lap to decide it was settled on the other side of the page.

21:14 Sources and next episode

Every driver races under the same rules. One person decides when the racing starts again.

Every number in this episode has a source, and you will find them all below the video.

Subscribe, and the files reach you.

Next time: who owns the commercial rights to Formula One, and for how long. That episode is called The Hundred-Year Lease.