Amid all the chatter this Formula 1 season about Lando Norris of McLaren challenging Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for a world championship, a different battle has begun to rage behind the scenes: F1 drivers vs. the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, or FIA—the organization that sanctions the sport. That particular battle came to a head in Qatar, where a slew of seemingly bizarre penalties transformed F1’s penultimate race. Something, it seems, is amiss at the FIA.
It could be easy to point the finger explicitly at Rui Marques, the brand-new race director appointed by the FIA just two weekends ago in Las Vegas. After all, Marques had never directed an F1 race until he was assigned the duty in the wake of former race director Niels Wittich’s firing. Marques’ primary experience came from his role as race director for Formula 2 and Formula 3, but in Qatar, with no successor named, he was left to juggle both his old and his new responsibilities.
But blaming Marques would be short-sighted; it wasn’t his decision to fire Wittich. No, this problem has much deeper roots, and those roots have burrowed into the FIA.
The conflict between the organizers and F1 drivers and teams is a tale old as time; all the way back at F1’s first race, the 1950 British Grand Prix, Ferrari refused to turn up due to squabbles about the prize money. Those tensions have only grown as F1’s sanctioning body gained greater authority—but things have seemed particularly amiss in the past few years.
In the wake of the scandalous 2021 Abu Dhabi finale, FIA President Jean Todt’s reign at the helm of the sanctioning body came to an end, and in his place came Mohammed Ben Sulayem. Sulayem, a former racer and representative for Emirati motorsport. Things have gotten a little crazy ever since.
Sulayem’s presidency has coincided with a serious shift in FIA personnel. Neils Wittich was perhaps the most prominent and the most shocking, but the long list of personnel to depart the FIA in the last year includes Paolo Basarri (compliance director), Steve Nielsen (sporting director), Deborah Mayer (head of FIA’s commission for women), Tim Goss (single-seater technical director), Natalie Robyn (chief executive officer), Luke Skipper (director of communications), and Jacob Bangsgaard (secretary general of mobility).
Further, Sulayem’s bombastic personality and his candor with the media have seen him in hot water. Archived comments from 2001 appeared soon after he took charge of the FIA in which he was quoted saying he disliked “women who think they are smarter than men, for they are not in truth”—a statement that the FIA claimed, “do not reflect the president’s beliefs.”
This year, Sulayem publicly called out the drivers for swearing on the radio, claiming that they’re racers and not “rappers.” Racial coding of the word “rappers” aside, Sulayem’s comments infuriated drivers, who requested to be treated like adults; after all, racing is a heat-of-the-moment business, and drivers aren’t the ones who broadcast in-race radio messages.
Media comments alone don’t fully summarize the controversy following Sulayem’s presidency. One of his first acts as FIA President involved overseeing the investigation into 2021’s controversial season-ender at Abu Dhabi, where F1 safety car protocol was breached in order to finish the race with a one-lap shoot-out. The investigation concluded that the result could not be changed because there was “no available mechanism to change the classification”—ignoring the fact that the FIA President has the ability to refer any controversial race results to the FIA International Court of Appeal.
Further, Sulayem was alleged to have told FIA officials to declare the Las Vegas street circuit unfit for racing and to have attempted to intervene in the results of the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Pair that contentious leadership style with an FIA that has been stretched thin in the wake of personnel departures, and you end up with something as perplexing as the 2024 Qatar Grand Prix.
It kicked off after qualifying when Max Verstappen was handed a confounding one-place grid penalty, dropping him from pole position to second place. In the race itself, we saw the following penalties:
- Lewis Hamilton: Five seconds for a jump start
- Lewis Hamilton: Drive-through for speeding in pit lane
- George Russell: Five seconds and one penalty point for a safety car infringement
- Alex Albon: 10 seconds and two penalty points for a collision with Kevin Magnussen
- Liam Lawson: 10 seconds and two penalty points for a collision with Valtteri Bottas
- Lance Stroll: 10 seconds and two penalty points for a collision with Albon
- Lando Norris: A 10-second stop-and-go penalty, plus three penalty points, for ignoring a yellow flag
The Norris incident is fascinating. The penalty he received effectively killed his race, seeing him drop from second place to 10th by the end of the race. But McLaren has raised some serious concerns about the yellow flag in the first place.
Partway through the race, Alex Albon lost a mirror, and that mirror ended up in the middle of the front straight. Race control waved a local yellow, then rescinded that yellow, before ultimately displaying it again. Norris’ yellow-flag violation came in that period of indecision.
And while the mirror was technically off the racing line, it was still very much in the way — which was reaffirmed when Valtteri Bottas’ Sauber demolished the carbon fiber and glass mechanism while obeying a blue flag. Race control still neglected to call for a safety car; it was only after Hamilton and Carlos Sainz blew tires running over the debris that the race directors finally slowed the pace.
The situation was so chaotic that the FIA had to sit down with race control after the conclusion of the Grand Prix to issue an explainer on the penalties.
Regarding the lack of a safety car for the mirror, the FIA stated that the mirror constituted a “small amount of debris” and that it was not necessary to issue a safety car for that small debris—not until Bottas turned the mirror into a minefield of carbon fiber. The FIA states that it will be discussing the situation with teams.
Regarding Norris, “the penalty was in accordance with the penalty guidelines circulated to teams” earlier this year, and “a double yellow flag infringement is considered a serious compromise of safety,” hence the penalty.
The FIA also addressed a malfunction of the safety car lights—but it didn’t touch on the various other 10-second penalties or Verstappen’s one-place grid penalty.
Teams and drivers are likely to continue requesting clarification, just as they did over Verstappen’s dual 10-second penalties in Mexico, or over Norris’ five-second penalty in Austin, or over the aborted start chaos in Brazil. But the answer to those concerns will require a deep look at the very heart of the FIA itself.
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