Horner: 'Overregulated' F1 misses experienced Whiting

Red Bull's Christian Horner says Formula 1 missed the experience of the late Charlie Whiting, its past racing director, in Sunday's tumultuous Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The penultimate round of the 2021 F1 world championship was a story of red flags, confusion, grid position dealings, disruption, and on-track incidents that kept the stewards on their toes from start to finish.

However, like his driver Max Verstappen, Horner felt that the evening had yielded once again its unfair share of equivocal calls from race director Michael Masi and the officials, with the latter's seemingly loose decisions impacting the sport's goodwill in the Red Bull team principal's view.

"I think we're over regulated," contended the visibly frustrated  Horner.

"There's rules about 10 car lengths, then the formation lap isn't a formation lap if it's a restart. It feels that there's too many rules.

"It felt like today the sport missed Charlie Whiting, I'm sorry to say, but the experience that he had…

"It's obviously frustrating but yeah, it's difficult for Michael [Masi] and the stewards, particularly at this type of venue, type of circuit, with the amount of debris and types of corner there are, but yeah, it's the same for everybody."

After Sunday's race, Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko suggested that the Milton Keynes-based outfit isn't treated the same as Mercedes by the stewards.

Horner echoed the Austrian's view and highlighted the FIA's lack of consistency, pointing to the five-second penalty handed to Verstappen in yesterday's race and to Saturday's decisions regarding Lewis Hamilton's near collision with Nikita Mazepin in FP3 and an alleged yellow flag breach later in the day by the Briton, both of which went sanction-free Horner noted.

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"Obviously pretty much every decision went against us, as they did in Doha a couple of weeks ago," he said. "Then we saw two incidents yesterday that ... it's been variable to say the least."

Horner acknowledged that Sunday evening's circumstances in Jeddah only complicated Masi's task. But the Red Bull chief felt that there were "many lessons" to take away from the evening.

"I think it was a tough race for them to manage today," he said. "Obviously a lot of debris, there was obviously a lot of traffic, backwards and forwards with race control over various different incidents, and then safety cars, virtual safety cars, restarts.

"Some of the process obviously was difficult to keep track of, so I think there are many lessons out of that race that will be discussed at length over the coming weeks."

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