F1: Michael Masi says piss-off to the FIA and F1, takes new position (5th Update)

In addition to taking the role as Chairman of the Supercars Commission, Autosport reports they are hearing that Masi has also been nominated for the recently re-established South Australian Motorsport Board.

The board, which used to control the Adelaide 500, was shut down by the government in 2015 and the event was taken over by the South Australian Tourism Commission.

It has now been re-formed to again run the Adelaide 500, with the only formal appointments to the SAMB so far chairman Andrew Daniels and chief executive Mark Warren.

The Adelaide 500 will take place on December 1-4.

Former FIA race director Michael Masi is set for his return to motorsport as the new chairman of the Supercars Commission in Australia.

Masi is now in line for a return to motorsport, however, taking over from former driver and commentator Neil Crompton as the chairman of the Supercars Commission.

Crompton left the position in June.

Prior to joining the FIA in 2018 as Charlie Whiting’s deputy race director, Masi served in the same capacity in the Supercars series.

Since his departure from the FIA, Masi provided the following statement to Autosport:

“It has been a pleasure and honor representing the FIA as the single-seater sporting director and FIA Formula 1 race director and safety delegate since Charlie’s unexpected and tragic passing in Melbourne 2019.

“Having worked on various projects around the world with the federation and its member clubs for over a decade prior to my appointment, I have now decided to leave the organization and relocate back to Australia to be closer to my family and friends.

“I am proud to have worked in partnership for many years with the various FIA member clubs, Formula 1 Group, the competitors, promoters and circuit operators and my colleagues and team internally at the FIA.

“I will always treasure these lifelong relationships and friendships that I have developed throughout my journey to date.”

“In particular, I am eternally grateful to Herbie Blash and the late Charlie Whiting for identifying me as a future successor in 2018, a role that I was looking forward to shadowing and learning from Charlie for many years prior to his shock passing,” he said.

“I also pass on my sincere appreciation for the support and guidance during my tenure of the former FIA President Jean Todt, Stefano Domenicali, and my dedicated FIA single-seater team.

“I extend my appreciation to the tens of thousands of dedicated volunteers and officials that allow motorsport to happen each and every day around the world, as the safety of the competitors and officials has always remained my highest priority.”

“Thank you to the FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem and his presidential team for their personal support since their appointment and I wish them the best for the future.

“The personal support of my family, friends, and colleagues globally during this journey and particularly in the last few months can only be described as overwhelming and something that I will forever cherish.”

The FIA has confirmed its former Formula 1 race director Michael Masi has officially told them to go pound sand and has left, seven months after overseeing the controversial conclusion to last year’s world championship.

In a statement today the FIA said Masi “has decided to leave the FIA and relocate to Australia to be closer to his family and take on new challenges.”

“He oversaw a three-year period as FIA Formula 1 race director and safety delegate following the sudden passing of Charlie Whiting in 2019, carrying out the numerous functions he was tasked with in a professional and dedicated manner,” it added. “The FIA thanks him for his commitment and wishes him the best for the future.”

Speaking for the first time since the Abu Dhabi report was published, FIA president Ben Sulayem said the move to replace Masi was made to “take the pressure and stress from him”, and that talks were ongoing about a new role.

“We are grateful for the three years he invested with us, and he put his time in,” Ben Sulayem said.

“But now we are negotiating with him of course to stay in the FIA. He is an important figure to us. Our people are negotiating another place for him within the FIA.”

They are probably trying to get him to lead the new remote ‘virtual’ race control team, which will back up race control at the track.

Ben Sulayem revealed the idea to create a new virtual race control room that would offer greater support to the on-site race control came from a visit to an F1 team earlier this year.

“The idea came to me in January when I made a visit to some of the Formula 1 teams, and went to one of the launches,” Ben Sulayem said.

“I said, ‘what’s that, it looks like a theater!’ and they said this is actually race control, but virtual. I said, ‘why don’t we have one?’ I said ‘do we have one?’ and they said no.

“So now we invested in it, and it’s actually working since yesterday. We didn’t promise and not deliver. We are delivering.

“So they will have another race control there. They will have also officials. They will have also from the legal department, and they will support. The virtual race control will not be running the race. The race will be run from the country itself.”

We suspect Masi will tell them to “piss off” as this role will be a downgrade and a slap in the face.

The man who was hand-picked for the role of F1 Race Director by his esteemed predecessor, Charlie Whiting, has been thrown a lifeline by Motorsport Australia, where CEO Eugene Arocca has made clear Masi would be welcomed home with open arms.

“I’ve got to be very mindful that I’m not part of a process,” he continues, “I wasn’t privy to the information that was being considered by the FIA, but on a personal level if you see a mate, and particularly an Australian, have to go through what he’s gone through, I’ve got a certain amount of empathy and disappointment and frustration and anger.

“Unlike many others, he’s actually been administering, involved in managing motorsport for many, many years. That’s a good thing. He’s got an extensive background and history. He’s very insightful, intelligent, and able to make decisions in the heat of a moment. That’s something that people may have lost in some of the debate.

“It’s really easy to be a critic on the side lines thinking what he went through when he was making those decisions,” adds Arocca. “There would be other people that would be completely paralyzed in exactly the same circumstances. He made the call. That is the first character trait of a strong leader.”

Revealing that he has been in communication with Masi since last week’s announcement, Arocca admits that his friend has taken the whole affair hard.

“I can’t speak on his behalf, but I would say that one of the more difficult elements of all this, let’s call it this incident, happened late last year, some three months ago now, and to a large degree it’s been a process that hasn’t lent itself to really being in a good frame of mind.

“It’s been a tortuous two or three months of discussion, debate, criticism, public airing of view. And you have to have a hide that’s pretty thick to be able to withstand all that and come out the other end feeling okay.

“Gladly, based on the fact that he responded this morning, and he was obviously pretty flat, he’s a man who’s got fantastic resilience.”

Looking ahead, he says: “We would love to tap into his knowledge at any level. He’s just an elite talent that would be wasted to the sport if he’s not used in some capacity, and so we’ll keep an open mind.

“At the moment, we’re obviously concentrating on the year ahead, and when he’s decided what he wants to do, no doubt among many others, he’ll be contacted by not only us but by others.

“He’s just such, I’ll use the word elite. He’s officiated for three years in one of the most public, high pressure sporting events with an element of danger in the world, and he’s done it during a pandemic with significant levels of travel, stress, other duties, and in my view that stands well on his resume for any employer anywhere in the world.”