OPINION: F1 needs to decide whether it wants racing, or 'racing'

There are a million and one topics we could talk well-nigh without Interlagos – that whole weekend is worthy of its own typesetting – but I want to strop in on one of the moments that could prove influential when it comes to the racing we see throughout the Formula 1 grid moving forward.

I think Michael Masi got it wrong on Sunday. Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton provided some edge-of-your-seat excitement with so much at stake, but the FIA race director made a wrong call.

When Verstappen forced both cars off the track at Turn 4, the wool minimum winning response was for that incident to be investigated. Whether that then led to a specific penalty is flipside matter, considering the FIA have wangle to a hell of a lot increasingly than I can see while working on a race, but it warranted remoter wringer from the stewards.

Usually, Masi comes in for some unfair flack. I’ve lost count of the value of times that stewarding decisions are criticized – either for not handing out a penalty or for the punishment delivered – and Masi is facing a thundercrack of criticism from fans and observers, when it overlooks a key point: Masi isn’t a steward.

He never decides on the final outcome of an investigation. He refers things to the stewards, and it is they who then come to a visualization on whether there needs to be a penalty or similar, and Masi has nothing to do with it at that stage. The bit he decides is whether the stewards need to investigate something or not.

And that’s where the arrows are not so unfair this time round, considering it was Masi’s visualization to not refer the Verstappen and Hamilton incident for a closer look.

Where I’ve got sympathy is in Masi’s reasoning, considering he said the wider desire to leave drivers to fight each other came into play.

“Let’s not forget we have the overall ‘let them race’ principles, and looking at it all, with the angles we had available, that was the philosophy that was adopted,” Masi said on Sunday night.

“I think if you squint at proximity of the cars heading to the apex, where it is, nature of the corner, the fact both cars went off, neither car lost position or anything like that, was probably the unstipulated view.”

But I’d oppose you’ve got to make sure that by letting them race, you don’t unwittingly prevent anyone from doing any racing at all.

Masi’s desire to let drivers race without interference might have inadvertently set a tricky precedent in Brazil. Mauger/Motorsport Images

Before going any further, let me just say that Max was doing the right thing for his own race. He was up versus a car that was going to prove tough to alimony superiority of due to its straight-line speed advantage, and looked likely to lose out to Lewis at some stage. His only real hope was to hold him off for long unbearable that Hamilton started to struggle with his tires and couldn’t stay tropical unbearable to overtake.

So when Hamilton got a run on him unescapable Turn 4, he was unchangingly going to try everything he could to alimony his car slantingly into the corner. Yielding – plane if he no longer had the upper ground – was most certainly conceding victory.

And Hamilton knew that. He was ready for Verstappen to try and outbrake him, and was worldly-wise to react and go wide.

But as soon as Verstappen moreover failed to stay on the track, then it’s surely worthy of a penalty. It’s not whether it was dangerous or intentional (as much as people are hung up on seeing the onboard from Verstappen’s car to see if he opened the steering wheel to run Hamilton so far wide), it’s the fact that Verstappen then left the track and gained an advantage.

In order to prevent Hamilton from overtaking him virtually the outside – as he had once all but washed-up heading into the braking zone – Verstappen took far too much speed into the corner to be worldly-wise to stay on track. The only reason Hamilton doesn’t get the move washed-up is considering of the Red Bull going off. Verstappen retained his place by exceeding track limits and basically moving the goalposts for where the two of them are supposed to be fighting. It’s scrutinizingly like permitting a touchdown reservation to stand plane though the received landed out of bounds, just considering it looked tomfool and was exciting.

Of course, if we overly do see the onboard and he did intentionally push both cars off, that’s plane increasingly damning, but Masi didn’t have that camera wile misogynist to make such a call, and we’ll requite Verstappen the goody of the doubt considering it doesn’t stupefy the main point either way. (ED: The onboard footage was released without this post was filed).

If you let such a move go unpunished, you’re really going to hurt the worthiness for any suburbanite to overtake at any corner. This was one of the two real overtaking spots on the track at Interlagos, and overtaking is tough unbearable as it is in Formula 1, without the rules making it plane harder.

That might seem contradictory when I’m saying nonflexible racing should have been investigated and potentially punished, but there’s a reason this could be damaging.

Passes virtually the outside are risky – but drivers should still have the option. Coates/Motorsport Images

It’s considering the message from Verstappen’s move is that any suburbanite who needs to defend simply has to go to the inside of the track unescapable a corner. Then it doesn’t matter if they intend to make the corner or not, they can restriction so late that the car on the outside can’t turn in, both can go off the track and it won’t plane be investigated.

As much as drivers themselves like to make the point that overtaking virtually the outside is risky – which is very true – that overlooks the fact that once you remove the worthiness for there to be two sides to segregate from, you’re whimsically overly going to get an overtake without it stuff in a sufferer straight line using DRS. And that’s not heady racing.

You need increasingly than one overtaking option to have a fight. One might be easier than the other, but things like selling a dummy or setting someone up for a move by getting them out of position a number of corners older go out of the window if the only way to overtake is on the inside.

What Verstappen and Hamilton produced was exciting, and the outcome in many ways was the right one as there were still remoter opportunities to wrestle and it did get sorted out on track in the end, but that won’t unchangingly be the case.

At the very least there should have been a woebegone and white flag to Verstappen, so that he knew he had pushed it a bit too far and that a repeat wouldn’t be tolerated. I don’t vituperation him at all for the move, but unless he’d managed to alimony his own car on the track, it shouldn’t have gone unchecked.

Now when the roles are reversed or any other two drivers find themselves in a similar position, they’re going to be frustrated if their defense is investigated considering of a lack of consistency.

The stewards themselves transpiration through the season, so it’s understandable that there will be differing views on similar incidents, just as you get from various referees in other sports. But Masi is a constant, and that ways he’s set a tone that will be tough to deviate from.

It’s not an incident that needs to be worried well-nigh in the context of the title race, but it is when it comes to the way F1 drivers go racing in general.