ABU DHABI — Christian Horner has revealed for the first time that he deliberately put pressure on race director Michael Masi to restart the contentious 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the divisive finale that opens his new memoir, Drive. Red Bull's Max Verstappen and then-Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton entered the final race of the season level on points, with Hamilton ahead in the closing laps before Nicholas Latifi crashed his Williams and brought out the safety car. Verstappen, who had pitted for fresh tyres, sat behind five lapped cars separating him from Hamilton as the field circulated behind the safety car.
Horner wrote that the situation appeared hopeless for Red Bull with so much traffic to clear. “My heart sank,” Horner wrote. “That meant that Max would have to pass all five cars before getting to Lewis, which was impossible in one racing lap. I decided to apply some more pressure on race control. ‘Come on, Michael, we need to get this race going; why aren’t we getting these lapped cars out the way?’”
Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, Horner explained he had only realised that year, once radio messages to the race director began to be broadcast, that Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff had been speaking directly to Masi. “Hang on, that’s not on? You’re putting pressure on the referee here,” Horner said. “So I was like to our team manager, ‘Get me on the line’, because I never spoke to Charlie Whiting in 15 years that he was there.”
Masi then took the highly controversial decision to unlap only the cars between Verstappen and Hamilton and restart the race with just one lap remaining, a move that allowed Verstappen on new tyres to pass Hamilton and claim the championship. Horner insisted Red Bull had done nothing wrong and that the call was within the race director’s authority. “He made the decision, which was within his remit, as per the regulations to be able to do, but it had never been done before, to allow the cars between Max and Lewis to unlap,” Horner said. “It wasn’t our fault but we’re in a position where we’ve got this one lap to have a crack at it, and if anyone is going to deliver you on a lap like that, it’s Max. What happened, happened.” Masi was replaced ahead of the 2022 season.