Former FIA driver steward Danny Sullivan has cracked open Formula 1’s most radioactive time capsule – Abu Dhabi 2021 – and, unsurprisingly, it still explodes on contact.
More than four years after Max Verstappen swept past Lewis Hamilton on the final lap to snatch his first world championship, Sullivan has revisited the night that split the sport down the middle.
And while the cast of characters is familiar and the ending well-worn, Sullivan’s retelling adds a sharp edge: not outrage, not conspiracy – but a blunt verdict on a decision by FIA race director Michael Masi that, once taken, made the outcome inevitable.
Sullivan, who raced in Formula 1 with Tyrrell in 1983 and later spent 14 years as an FIA driver steward, was not in the stewarding room that night. But he was part of the officiating structure during the 2021 season, and his insider’s view cuts straight to the heart of the controversy.
“The stewards never had a call on any of that stuff,” Sullivan told Epartrade. “People were yelling at him [Masi] 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. Well, under the rules, he’s supposed to wave by all lapped cars.
“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.”
In Sullivan’s telling, Masi’s now-infamous call wasn’t a grey-area interpretation or a stewarding debate – it was race control acting solo under intense pressure, trying to manufacture a green-flag finish.
Once that choice was made, the chessboard was already overturned.
What followed, Sullivan argues, was pure physics rather than sporting drama.
“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,” the 1985 Indy 500 winner recounted.
“There was not a chance in hell that he wasn’t going to pass him at that stage. He [Masi] basically gifted him the world championship on that decision.”
That sentence still lands like a hammer. Not because Verstappen did anything wrong – Sullivan is explicit on that – but because the final act removed uncertainty.
The championship wasn’t decided by daring, strategy, or wheel-to-wheel genius. It was decided the moment the Safety Car procedure was bent.
Yet Sullivan stops short of painting Michael Masi as a villain. Instead, he sketches a portrait of a race director ground down by a brutal season and cornered by the sport’s own appetite for spectacle.
“To be fair to Michael, he’s 23 [sic] races into the season. 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.
Former FIA race director Michael Masi.
“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 last line may be the most honest assessment of all. Abu Dhabi 2021 isn’t a wound that heals – it’s a scar the sport keeps touching.
Despite the events of Yas Marina in 2021, Sullivan was also keen to dismantle one of the most persistent myths to emerge from the fallout: that stewarding decisions are shaped by friendships, favouritism, or hidden agendas.
“I’d like to clarify one thing: there’s [a] driver steward in the room, but there are three other stewards in there as well, so it’s a panel decision,” he explained.
“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.
FIA driver steward Derek Warwick on the grid in Qatar with Adam Norris.
“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.”
And that may be the most uncomfortable takeaway of all: Abu Dhabi 2021 wasn’t the product of corruption or conspiracy – just a single, high-pressure call that changed Formula 1 history forever.
The debate, as Sullivan freely admits, isn’t going anywhere. And neither is the discomfort.
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