Did anyone foresee the fallout? Horner’s memoir Drive opens with the disputed 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, a race still polarising fans.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and then‑Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton arrived at the season finale level on points. In the closing laps Hamilton led, while a freshly pitted Verstappen sat on fresh tyres with five lapped cars between them, a daunting obstacle for the Dutch rookie.
“My heart sank,” Horner wrote. “That meant Max would need to overtake all five cars before reaching Lewis – an impossible feat in a single lap.”
“I chose to lean harder on race control. ‘Come on, Michael, we need to get this race going; why aren’t those lapped cars moving?'”
Masi made the controversial call to let only the intervening cars unlap and restarted with one lap remaining, paving the way for Verstappen’s championship win. In my view, that decision tipped the scales. He was replaced for 2022.
Horner told the High Performance Podcast that he only realized that year, when radio messages to the race director were aired, that Toto Wolff had been speaking directly to Masi.
“Hold on, that’s not on? You’re pressuring the referee,” Horner said. “I asked our team manager to get me on the line, since I hadn’t spoken to Charlie Whiting in 15 years despite his presence.”
He maintained that Red Bull did nothing wrong in the finale.
“He acted within his remit, as the rules allow, but it was unprecedented to let the cars between Max and Lewis unlap,” Horner explained. “It wasn’t our fault; we simply had one lap to attack, and if anyone could seize it, it was Max. What happened, happened.”
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– The Team