Nearly four years on, Toto Wolff admits the memory of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix still continues to plague his sleep.
The Mercedes F1 boss has again lashed out at former race director Michael Masi, branding the Australian a “lunatic” who “destroyed the record of the greatest champion of all time” – a reference to Lewis Hamilton’s lost shot at an unprecedented eighth world title.
The events of that December evening remain seared into the sport’s collective memory.
Hamilton had dominated the finale, poised to seal his eighth championship after a season-long dogfight with Max Verstappen.
But a late crash by Williams’ Nicholas Latifi triggered a Safety Car and, ultimately, Masi’s now-infamous call to allow only certain lapped cars to un-lap themselves – handing Verstappen, on fresh tyres, the chance to snatch victory on the very last lap.
The decision left Wolff apoplectic at the time, famously radioing race control with the words, “Michael, this is so not right.” Masi’s cold reply – “It’s called a motor race” – became the defining phrase of a controversy that still casts a shadow over Formula 1.
“I have not experienced the loss of control of a situation since I was a child,” Wolff recalled this week while appearing alongside his wife, F1 Academy managing director Susie Wolff, at a London event promoting her new book Driven.
“There is one lunatic who can basically destroy the record of the greatest champion of all time.”
Disbelief and Heartbreak
Susie Wolff offered her own emotional recollection of that night – and the disbelief that followed.
“It was disbelief,” she said. “That one person’s decision to interpret the rules, in a way that they had never been interpreted before, could have caused such an outcome.
“It sat so heavily with me, for a long time afterwards.”
Yet despite the pain, Susie was keen to draw a line between anger at the decision and any resentment toward Verstappen himself.
“I was so upset in Abu Dhabi, and not because Max won. He was a deserving champion. It’s nothing against Max,” she clarified.
“It was the way it happened. The fact that Lewis was so deserving on that day. He was the better driver. He was winning that race.”
In the months that followed Verstappen’s contentious coronation, FIA conceded that “human error” played a role in the decision that turned Formula 1’s most intense title battle into its most controversial.
But for Toto Wolff, the scars remain. The Austrian’s words this week make clear that the pain of that final lap still lingers – a moment when, in his eyes, control of the sport itself slipped away.
Although the trophies have been polished and the calendars have moved on, for the Mercedes boss, the nightmare of Abu Dhabi 2021 still flickers like a warning light in the rear-view mirror of Formula 1 history.
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