“Never an official FIA document”– Mercedes confuses FIA with mail consisting non-existing rules

Tanish Chachra | 27/07/2021
"Never an official FIA document"– Toto Wolff sends mail of diagrams to FIA consisting of non-existing rules; Michael Masi is perplexed.

“Never an official FIA document”– Toto Wolff sends mail of diagrams to FIA consisting of non-existing rules; Michael Masi is perplexed.

The diagram sent by Toto Wolff to Michael Masi after the collision between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, for which the Mercedes’ team principal got trolled by the FIA race director, was apparently full of rules which don’t exist and were supposed to defend Hamilton.

According to a report by Motorsport-total.com, the FIA openly declared that the diagram “was never an official FIA document” and was never published or distributed among the teams.

The report clarifies that Mercedes probably was not trying to spread fake news but rather became a victim of a misunderstanding amidst the high stakes, especially when the document’s origin was long ago.

The rising tensions between Hamilton and his erstwhile partner Nico Rosberg hampered the aims of Mercedes, and a framework was designed to define the internal team rules; Mercedes worked on the so-called “Rules of Engagement”, which are now (after several ongoing revisions) known as the “Racing Intent”.

The racing intent is a document about the set of rules laid by Mercedes how the drivers are supposed to behave with each other on the track that would classify the difference between competitive racing and unacceptable blunder.

What’s in the document?

The report reveals that Mercedes approached FIA in 2015 asking how wheel-to-wheel duels are rated by the race stewards during the race day.

In response, the FIA sent him a diagram, which Wolff used as a piece of evidence to back his driver for the collision with the Verstappen probe. But the diagram was an unofficial and informal communication to Mercedes and not an official communication.

It has been further revealed that Masi had no idea from where the diagram came and how it could be presented as viable evidence in the investigation.

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
FIA Mercedes

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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