FIA prevents repeat of Abu Dhabi dispute with subtle rule change

A subtle word change in an article of the FIA's sporting regulations will avoid a repeat in the future of the controversy that marred F1's 2021 title decider in Abu Dhabi.

Earlier this year, F1's sporting regs featured a slight change to the sport's Safety Car procedure on the back of last year's botched finale.

In a bid to speed up a race's restart process, the FIA updated Article 55.13 of F1's Sporting Regulations, stating that the Safety Car will no longer need to wait until the last lapped car has passed the leader to withdraw and return to the pits, a change that should ensure a quicker restart process in the future.

But the FIA has now added another tweak to Article 55.13 that also governs how backmarkers are allowed to unlap themselves.

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The change involves replacing in the following paragraph the word "any" with "all".

"If the clerk of the course considers it safe to do so, and the message ‘lapped cars may now overtake’ has been sent to all competitors using the official messaging system, all cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car."

Previously, the presence of the word "any" in the article is what allowed former FIA race director Michael Masi to permit only those cars positioned between race leader Lewis Hamilton and second placed driver Max Verstappen to unlap themselves in Abu Dhabi, a decision that opened the floodgates to the controversy that led to Masi's ousting from the FIA.

Including the word "all" in lieu of "any" now takes away any ambiguous interpretation of the article by the race director and will avoid a repeat in the future of last December's embroilment.

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