Michael Masi "gifted" Max Verstappen with controversial decision, insists former racer and steward, Danny Sullivan.

Though he only enjoyed one season in F1, with Tyrrell in 1983, his best result being a fifth in Monaco, Sullivan achieved fame with an Indy 500 win in 1985 and the CART title three years later. There were also four Le Mans outings, the American finishing third in 1994 in a Porsche.

A driving force in Red Bull's driver search programme to find an American driver to race in F1, he was the drivers' representative on the stewards' panel for a number of grands prix between 2010 and 2018.

Now, though he was not part of the stewarding team, the American has opened up the wound that is the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, insisting that Michael Masi's decision to allow only certain lapped cars - those running between race leader Lewis Hamilton and Verstappen - to overtake the Safety Car and unlap themselves, and indeed prematurely ending the Safety Car period, was entirely wrong, and "gifted" the Dutchman the title.

"The stewards never had a call on any of that stuff," he tells Epartrade. "People were yelling at him that they didn't want to finish under yellow because it didn't look good. That's why he waved by five cars, which basically gave Max a shot.

"Under the rules, he's supposed to wave by all lapped cars," he continues. "But if they had done that, they wouldn't have finished the race. They would have had to finish under yellow, because the other lapped cars were back further in the field.

"So he let the five by, and then he put Max right behind Lewis. Max had stopped for tyres, Lewis had not, he's on qualifying tyres, he's on reds. Lewis's tyres had 44 laps on them. There was not a chance in hell that he wasn't going to pass him at that stage.

"He," Sullivan insists, referring to Masi, "basically gifted him the world championship on that decision.

To be fair to Michael, he's 23 races into the season," he admits. "These guys are travelling non-stop, they're being beat up all the time by teams, everybody. There's all kinds of controversy. A lot of pressure, lateness, last five minutes of basically the season...

"And again, that's my viewpoint. If you're a Max fan, and I'm a Max fan, don't misunderstand me, but if I'm Dutch and I am leaning more towards Max, I would say 'but that was the call'. And it was, Max didn't do anything.

"But it was not, for me, a good call. That's my opinion and everybody can debate that and we will until we all stop."

That aside, the American was keen to dispel talk of ongoing driver bias among the stewards.

"I'd like to clarify one thing," he says. "There's a driver steward in the room, but there are three other stewards in there as well, so it's a panel decision.

"There's been a couple of cases where I was overruled even though I thought that I was correct, but the other panellists disagreed with all the information that we had. And just to prove, the public would probably like to know this, the data that we have is unequivocal. There's nothing like it. We've got everybody's in-car camera. We've got throttle traces, we've got brake pressure, we've got steering input, we've got in-car cameras.

"In a lot of the cases we interview the drivers, we can if there's a situation after the event. So it's very thorough.

"In all the years I did it, 14 years, I never felt any bias from anybody. Nobody was like, 'well, that's a buddy of mine, so I'm going to rule in their favour or anything like that'. It was pretty straightforward."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Celtic Tiger, 11 hours ago

"Sullivan is talking out his a*se. There's been enough time to pull back and reflect on the bigger picture and looking at it without bias, the fact of the matter is that Hamilton should have had the championship wrapped up before Abu Dhabi. He didn't, he and Mercedes allowed it to get down to the wire. A poor qualifying and result in Monaco, stuck in 4th in Austria, staying out on inters on the restart in Hungary and letting the Alpine take the win, failed to make a good sprint race in Monza with Bottas losing his pole for exceeding engine components and Hamilton losing his pole and starting tenth due to exceeding engine components in Turkey. All of that played their part in Hamilton losing the title in '21. It was a whole season's worth of results and incidents that put them on the edge of the precipice of defeat and we're still supposed to believe one poor judgement steals it from them? I don't think so. It wasn't stolen. Max earned it by capitalizing all season on Mercedes' mistakes.
As far as Abu Dhabi is concerned, If Hamilton was penalized for cutting the corner and gaining an advantage earlier in the race Max would most likely have been leading the race before the safety car or if Mercedes made the call to pit Hamilton for fresh tyres when Red Bull had things may have turned out different but they didn't.
Still putting the boot in on Masi, is just side stepping all of that. Also, he must have been getting it from all sides that race. Both Wolff and Horner were trying to coach him in running the race the way they wanted it to be run, Wolff was especially guilty of this even before Abu Dhabi. Adding to that, no doubt his bosses up top did not want the championship decider to finish behind a safety car so he made the call, a poor choice granted, but a call made under duress doesn't excuse Mercedes dropping the ball throughout the season no matter how hard the denial runs with Toto... or in this case Sullivan."

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2. Posted by Editor, 15 hours ago

"@ moomoo

Sorry about that. To save us time in future is there anyone else you feel whose opinion is worthless and should be ignored."

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3. Posted by moomoo, 15 hours ago

"Why quote this long past his use-by guy anyway? As a pundit he's always been the absolute pits. Not. A. Pun."

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4. Posted by Tyrbiter, 19 hours ago

"Never going to let it go, what sort of example would that set?"

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5. Posted by Mad Matt, 21 hours ago

"I think he's right, it was a bad decision and it wasn't Max's fault.... but probably time to let it go now."

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Sullivan opens up old wound

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