FIA verdict reveals awkward F1 Abu Dhabi 2021 truth

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F1 Analysis

FIA verdict reveals awkward Abu Dhabi 2021 truth

Hey, the FIA were right all along!

Dan Ripley Global Editor

Professional F1 journalist and analyst

Tuesday 7 July 2026 19:44

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This day was always going to come, I didn't expect to have to wait as long as five years after the infamous F1 finale in Abu Dhabi in 2021 to see it but here it is.

That is the FIA, Michael Masi, and the stewards are now vindicated from that surreal night at the Yas Marina Circuit.

Granted, by the book they are not. I give you that. Race director Masi did break protocol by allowing backmarkers to unlap themselves on the penultimate lap, then restarting the race on the very next lap to allow Max Verstappen on brand new tyres to swoop past Lewis Hamilton with ease and win his first world championship.

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By and large - filtering out the outrageous bias from fans of Hamilton and Verstappen - the consensus was the FIA got this wrong. They should have stuck to the rule book, ignored the desire for a spectacle and allowed the most highly-charged title race in years to end under a safety car. It’s a fair argument.

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But at Silverstone on Sunday, all this seemed to be forgotten.

This time it wasn't Nicholas Latifi crashing, it was Verstappen, bringing out the safety car on lap 48 of 52 after spinning out.

Shortly after, the lapped cars were allowed to unlap themselves with one lap to go. This meant by the rules there had to be another lap under the safety car - effectively a formation finish.

However, this time there was widespread anger when the race was not resumed, following a software glitch that said the safety car would actually come in at the end of lap 51. Instead it, correctly, stayed out until the end.

Either way the FIA followed protocol and did what everyone demanded of them in 2021. You can accept they perhaps got it wrong in leaving out the safety car too long if there were no clear hazards, but they were spot on here based on past scenarios. However, the bigger problems surrounds how F1 deals with safety in the modern era.

FIA and F1 need to work smarter

The issue the FIA and F1 have as a now mainstream glitzy sport with corporate interests is safety is everything, and then some.

Of course, this is a perfectly acceptable stance, but they are boxed into old ideas with new heights of safety standards. Quite simply the old stuff is no longer fit for purpose.

In the past the safety car wasn’t used every single time a car came to a stop next to a track. Look back at some old races and you’ll see cars simply moved off track onto a grass verge or in some cases just off the racing line under nothing more than a yellow flag (or double waved yellows, remember them?!)

The safety car stayed out until the very end at the British GP

The race flowed a lot more than today's obsession with red flagging everything and throwing a virtual safety car out for an umbrella on the grass. This isn't an argument to say we should go back to how it was, only that an old system isn't working with modern safety standards.

For example, when Nico Hulkenberg retired for Audi why did the whole circuit have to go under virtual safety car conditions? Or even for Max Verstappen’s crash preceding the safety car.

Why can’t drivers have a ‘slow zone’ through areas of the track where hazards are present, rather than calling out a safety car to neutralise the entire race and bunch the pack up?

F1 has all the technology in the world to now keep the racing as alive as possible outside areas of the track where there is a crash, debris or marshals. This isn’t the 1990s (sadly) anymore.

Put simply, if the safety car was invented today, F1 fans would be furious with its huge artificial influence on a race. If we really want to avoid situations like Abu Dhabi 2021 or Silverstone on Sunday, simply isolate the impacted areas of the track with slow zones and let racing carry on everywhere else.

If a track like the Nurburgring with 24 hours of racing over miles and miles can get it right, then FIA and F1 can surely find a way to make it work in F1.

If F1 wants to strike a balance of excitement and safety and an end to fans not making their minds up if they want strict rules or flowing racing, then slow zones are the way to go.

Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

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F1 Max Verstappen Lewis Hamilton FIA British Grand Prix