F1 Qatar Grand Prix shambles a new low even for FIA calamities

FIA, Ben Sulayem, socials — Photo: © IMAGO

Qatar Grand Prix

Qatar Grand Prix shambles a new low even for FIA calamities

The penultimate race of the season was dreadfully handled

Chris Deeley

Sunday 1 December 2024 21:57 Updated: 22:10

What. Was. That?

The Qatar Grand Prix was exactly what fans had been waiting all weekend for. Hell, all month even, with the Las Vegas Grand Prix not exactly the most dramatic. An early safety car, Max Verstappen getting pushed hard at the front, battles all the way down the field.

Then Alex Albon's wing mirror fell off, and everything collapsed into pieces.

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The FIA and new race director Rui Marques appeared to believe that a large piece of car on the track, on the overtaking line of the fastest part of the circuit, was a hazard. They were right about that. That is the only thing they were right about.

Their reaction to that hazard was to throw yellow flags down the main straight – sometimes double waved, sometimes single, would love to hear from a decision-maker why even that wasn't consistent – and...hope that the mirror grew legs and walked off the track by itself, presumably?

The reaction was that the mirror was enough of a hazard to take action with yellow flags but not, for something like four or five laps, actually worth making a move to get it off the track, something that very clearly required a VSC or full safety car.

Qualifying also saw a contentious penalty handed out

Rui Marques (left) took over as F1 race director in Las Vegas

Then the most obvious thing in the world happened, Valtteri Bottas pulled out from behind another car and absolutely annihilated the mirror. A 200mph Formula 1 car running right over it sent that mirror to the shadow dimension and back, scattering shards of debris all over the track.

You've probably seen what happened by now, but in case you're somehow both saving yourself for the highlights and reading post-race reaction because you're perversely fascinated with the idea of being a walking contradiction, Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton immediately picked up punctures and the safety car was brought out not long after.

If that was the only thing that came from the baffling failure to take any definitive action, that'd be bad enough. Two of the sport's biggest stars nobbled by the most easily predictable thing possible. But it wasn't.

Lando Norris was hit by a huge penalty at the Qatar Grand Prix

When it was 'just' a double-waved yellow flag situation, Lando Norris failed to see the board (which lit up as he was driving past it) or the marshal waving two flags on the outside of the track, and kept his foot buried. That bought him a 10 second stop-and-go penalty, which put him right at the back, several seconds behind the artificially bunched-up field with a dozen laps to go.

Norris scythed through the back of the field to take two points – one for 10th place, one for the fastest lap – but that's 16 less than he'd have taken for the second place he was running in before the penalty. In a tight constructors' championship race, that is massive. It also promoted Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz by a position apiece, earning Ferrari five more points. That's a 21 point swing for a yellow flag violation which shouldn't have been possible, because more decisive action should've been taken.

While we're at it, Lewis Hamilton also got a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pitlane the first time the safety car took the field through (in order to give the track-sweepers time to work, something which they wouldn't have had to take the time to do if the mirror had just been taken off the circuit intact, incidentally) which may well not have happened if the sensible process had been followed.

McLaren are in a battle with Ferrari in the F1 constructors' title

That's three races ruined – and one of them ruined twice – as a direct result of a failure to act decisively.

Michael Masi's mishandling of the safety car situation in the 2021 season finale in Abu Dhabi is held up as the worst piece of race management in modern Formula 1, but I'm not sure that this wasn't worse. There were a lot of moving parts there, with even the FIA's reasonably critical report acknowledging 'difficult circumstances', 'significant time constraints' and 'immense pressure being applied by the teams'.

This wasn't that. There was a large piece of debris on a likely racing line, which race control was aware of. There was no gap between cars long enough to safely retrieve it. They mishandled the situation over the course of more than five minutes of the mirror laying on the track. This was asinine. What are the mitigating factors here? The fact that the race director is relatively new to F1 and was handling multiple races on the weekend, a situation entirely of the FIA's own making?

In a vacuum, this was a shambles. In the context of an FIA facing a number of questions over a raft of recent exits, on the same day that president Mohammed Ben Sulayem told Jonathan Noble in a combative and bizarrely frank interview that drivers' criticisms of the organisation are 'none of their business', it looks like an absolute farce.

Ben Sulayem and the FIA insist that there is no chaos in their organisation, that there is no FIA crisis, that the very idea of an FIA crisis is an invention of the media.

Alright, sure. And denial is a river in Egypt.

Max Verstappen FIA Las Vegas Grand Prix Alex Albon Qatar Grand Prix Rui Marques