Mercedes boss Toto Wolff opens up about reaching out to Michael Masi during the 2021 F1 season

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has opened up about how he reached out to Michael Masi throughout the 2021 F1 season to help guide his way through a tough title battle. The 2021 F1 season will go down as one of the most intense title battles of all time.

The battle featured reigning 7x world champion Lewis Hamilton going after a record-breaking 8th title battling against a young Max Verstappen. What made the whole thing even more intense was the involvement of both Mercedes and Red Bull team principals in the equation.

We not only had Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton going after each other on track and even in the media, but we also had Toto Wolff and Christian Horner at each other's throats for the most part.

To add to this, the race director was in a very precarious position where Michael Masi was under extreme pressure. The radio channel from the teams to the race director was made public and hence made a part of the global broadcast. This meant that the communication was public and the race director was under scrutiny all the time.

All this led to Masi making a horrible call in the title decider in Abu Dhabi that ended up going against the Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton. The decision led to the title battle turning on its head as Max Verstappen would overtake Hamilton on the last lap and win the title.

Since then, the FIA has released Masi from his duties, and the Australian has not been a part of F1. Talking about the former race director on the High Performance podcast, Toto Wolff was questioned if he felt a sense of empathy towards him since he left the sport.

The Mercedes boss was quite blunt in his assessment, saying that there were moments throughout that season when he tried to help the former race director. The fact that Masi did things his own way meant that the scope for empathy was not there. He said:

“I really tried to speak to Michael and guide him all along the year, and speak to him and say, ‘Listen, I’ve been in this sport for a long time. Listen to the drivers. Don’t always be stubborn in your decision making. Don’t be arrogant.’ And I tried that for the good of the sport, and obviously also for us as a team, not to be vulnerable to situations that could be totally detrimental."

He added:

“So in that sense, this is just, what happened is inexcusable. Now, you could say the empathy should make me realise how he feels. I realise how he feels, and I know that’s not good and bad, but he could have thought about it all year long when people, not only me, tried to support in the right way. So sometimes you have to just realise that someone is just doing his own thing or taking his own decision. So for me, I don’t care about it anymore."

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Mercedes boss on feeling angry at the race director for costing Lewis Hamilton the title

The Mercedes boss was questioned about what emotions it evoked when he looked back at what happened in 2021, and Wolff acknowledged that the only emotion it evoked was anger. Talking about how the 8th title was taken away from the best driver at the time, Wolff said:

"Angry. Not anything like depressed or sad, just angry. Angry that an individual was able to take an eighth championship away from the best driver in the world by [a] bad decision."

The name Michael Masi continues to be brought up again and again in Formula 1, and that should tell you the kind of impact the former race director has had on the sport. The AD2021 scandal is something that's often brought up by many and is still fresh in the minds of many.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff too, seems to have made his feelings clear about the former race director whose path back to F1 is as good as none.