Row Man Gross-Gene wrote:mario wrote:However, what really disgusts me is the way that Masi reacted to McLaren when they radioed him to complain that Tsunoda was ignoring the yellow flags and not slowing down as he passed Max's car. Masi's response was along the lines of "well, I don't think any of the drivers are slowing down enough, but I can't be bothered to investigate them and so can't be arsed to deal with Tsunoda" - which is disgraceful.
If that's what Masi truly meant, I would agree, but I heard it differently. The way I heard it is that so many drivers (if not all of them) failed to follow the rules of the double-waved yellow, that were Masi to enforce the rule uniformly, the resulting penalties would have resulted in no net changes to the running order. Given the eventual response from McLaren, it sure seems like that must not be an uncommon occurrence. The rules should be followed, but since it seems that pretty much all of the drivers reacted to the double-waved yellows as if they were single-waved yellows, he let it go. I don't necessarily agree with that course of action, but I can understand it.
As far as the length of time to deploy the safety car, I'd need someone to really take me through the thought process there to explain why it should be considered a dereliction of duty rather than just an instance of indecision within acceptable limits.
For pure rejectfulness, the call to Latifi was pretty hilarious, I'm surprised there is no language protocol for "go through the pit lane but don't box".
To me, it feels like a dereliction of duty on Masi's part that he is allowing the situation to deteriorate to the point where drivers feel they can act with relative impunity to double or single waived yellows.
As shown by the video clip that Miguel98 links to, we had Raikkonen completely ignoring the yellow flags and going flat out through that area - asides from the issue of what might have happened if he went through that debris field and got a puncture, the closing speed with Alonso raised a few concerns given that it looks like Alonso did slow down, whereas Kimi wasn't.
To me, it feels as if the drivers and teams believed that Masi would basically ignore those transgressions rather easily, and that Masi's reply basically acted as acknowledgement that is the case.
With regards to the safety car, there have been those pointing out that Masi pretty much waited for the entire field to pass Verstappen's crashed car before he deployed the safety car - even though Mazepin was the better part of a minute behind Schumacher, who himself had been more than 46s off the lead when Verstappen crashed.
Masi hasn't explained why, given that he did react more quickly to Stroll's crash by deploying the safety car, he waited longer for Verstappen's crash - especially when drivers were demanding to know over the radio why he hadn't deployed the safety car yet.