Formula 1’s new race director Rui Marques will need a thick skin as he tackles one of the most demanding jobs in motorsport, says Lando Norris
The former Formula 2 race director has taken over the role after the unexpected departure of Niels Wittich, who moved into the position in 2022. While the FIA’s statement said Wittich had stepped down from the role, reports elsewhere quoted him saying he did not choose to leave.
Although Marques has three years’ experience in the role from F2, Norris said he can expect fiercer scrutiny from F1’s drivers and teams. “Their job is tough,” he said. “I don’t think people realise how tough it is.
“As drivers we always give – I mean, we give everyone – a lot of abuse half the time. So it’s probably one of the hardest sports to police in the world, I think.
“I don’t know about every other sport, but I think it’s a sport where there’s so many things can happen. You want rules, but you also don’t want rules, and that makes it very tough. You’re always going to have people that disagree and people that agree. So I think it’s just a very tough position to be in.
“We also acknowledge it’s a very tough position to be in and to put yourself up for that role in the first place, I think, takes a bit of guts because you know you’re going to get crap from every side at some point, and you’ve got to accept that. You’ve got to be willing to accept that. I don’t think that’s easy for anyone to do.”
Wittich originally shared the role with Eduardo Freitas in 2022, before taking over it full-time last year. Norris says F1’s entire race control operation would benefit from having consistent staffing.
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“I don’t know what’s going on there, obviously things are not running as smoothly as what we would want,” he said. “But as such a big sport – [in] pretty much every other sport you have permanent stewards, you have permanent people, you have a permanent team that run everything for consistency and many other reasons. That’s all I know. That’s what we want as drivers. That’s what we request.”
Marques’ first event will be at the newest event on the F1 schedule where running was badly disrupted during its inaugural event when a loose water valve cover damaged two cars. However Esteban Ocon has confidence in Marques will prove up to the task of keeping the weekend organised.
“I think it’s definitely not an easy race to start in, around here, as a street circuit,” Ocon said. “But I think Rui, he came from Macau [Grand Prix] just now, so it’s probably a tougher circuit than here, definitely.
“I’m looking forward to meeting him and having good chats at the drivers’ meeting with him and seeing how he works. I’m sure we are going to be talking a lot on how he does things, what ideas he has, very important topics to us like track limits, kerbs, etc. Everybody has his way of doing things. We need to obviously communicate well in terms of what we feel is very important going forward.”
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