Don’t underestimate how tough a job F1’s new race director faces · RaceFans

The FIA Formula 1 race director tends to get blamed for things which don’t necessarily fall within their domain.

Penalty decisions, to take one example, are a particularly common cause for confusion among fans. The race director can – and often does – query incidents which they feel should be looked at. But it’s the stewards who do the looking-at.

It’s the stewards who decide whether to penalise a driver and, if so, how. Nonetheless, the race director often gets it in the ear from those who disapprove of decisions they didn’t make.

That much was clear in the reaction from some on social media yesterday to the news of Niels Wittich’s surprise departure from the role.

But the timing of the announcement – three rounds before the end of the season, with both championships hanging in the balance – invited the interpretation this was not a long-planned change. It was striking, too, that the news was hurried out shortly before Formula One Management confirmed details of its widely-teased new pre-season launch event.

So, few were surprised when, soon afterwards, came word Wittich hadn’t chosen to move on, as the FIA’s statement claimed, in order to “pursue new opportunities”.

The F1 race director’s responsibility is to ensure the safe and smooth running of grands prix as laid down by the FIA’s rules. Wittich appears to have done this well, certainly compared to the standard set by his predecessor, whose error during his final race in charge plunged F1 into crisis as it arguably swung the outcome of the 2021 world championship.

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F1 race director is a uniquely demanding role, where decisions are taken in split seconds and the stakes, as Michael Masi discovered, are extremely high. He has been thrust into the role at almost zero notice three seasons prior when his predecessor Charlie Whiting died on the eve of the 2019 championship. But though Masi ultimately lost his job by triggering a controversy which brought F1 into disrepute, other troubling incidents also occured on his watch.

Sergio Perez had a near-miss with a pair of marshals at Monaco in 2019. The following year a similar incident occured involving his team mate Lance Stroll and others at Imola. At Istanbul that year a qualifying session began in wet conditions while marshals were still on the track recovering a car.

The FIA’s subsequent investigation into the farcical 2021 championship decider concluded Masi had become over-stretched due to the demands of his workload. It’s not hard to see how this was the case amid the strains of two consecutive seasons badly disrupted by Covid-19.

F1’s regulations had to be extensively overhauled to allow races to go ahead amid a pandemic. A string of events were cancelled and calendars compressed with multiple double- and triple-headers. Masi’s time between races was consumed by conducting inspections of a series of tracks which were added to the calendar, including two new venues in the run-up to Abu Dhabi.

Added to that was the fierce rivalry between Red Bull and Mercedes as Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton scrapped for the championship. Masi was repeatedly called upon to make decisions which potentially had huge implications for the title fight – right up to the crucial one he got wrong.

So, in the aftermath of one of F1’s biggest controversies for years, the series found itself needing a new race director. It settled on two: Wittich from Germany’s DTM series and his WEC counterpart Eduardo Freitas, who rotated the job between them over the 22-round 2022 season.

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At the time FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem indicated the governing body would prefer to rotate race directors. Wittich covered the first five races that year, then regularly swapped with Freitas.

However after the Japanese Grand Prix, where the FIA was criticised by drivers after Pierre Gasly encountered a recovery vehicle on the circuit during a Safety Car period, the governing body announced Wittich would cover the final races. He has remained in charge since, and until yesterday there was no sign he was about to be replaced. The situation could hardly be more different to Masi’s departure, which was widely expected for two months before word came.

But Wittich is far from the first notable name within the FIA to depart over the past 12 months, however. Among those who have left in that time are sporting director Steve Nielsen, technical director Tim Goss, chief executive Natalie Robyn and the head of its commission for women, Deborah Mayer.

F1’s new race director is Rui Marques, who took charge of Formula 2’s events in the same weekend Wittich first ran an F1 race. Marques did not appear to expect a move up to F1 was imminent in an interview earlier this year. “In three years’ time, if I’m still doing what I’m doing today, I’m more than happy,” he said. “My career is moving a bit [towards] the single seater part in Formula 2 and Formula 3, I’m more than happy to continue this path.”

Wittich deserves credit for the effective but usually low-key job he did. One key change he implemented came immediately after his appointment in the form of a clarification of the rules on track limits.

Under Masi, F1 not only enforced different rules at different corners on the same track, but even different rules at different sessions on the same weekend. Wittich’s insistence that the white line should be the border everywhere finally forced F1 to start implementing effective solutions to one of its most unnecessary problems this year.

But arguably Wittich’s greater strength as a race director was that, unlike his predecessor, he never allowed himself to become the story. That’s the goal his replacement, F1’s fifth race director in six years, should strive for.

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