Sky analyst notes: Masi got 'screwed over' in Abu Dhabi final

Due to the accident in the closing stages of the race, Masi had to make a quick decision. He opted for a safety car and a restart on the last lap. This allowed Max Verstappen to overtake Lewis Hamilton on fresher tires and run away with the championship. The race director received a lot of criticism for this.

However, according to Chandhok, the problem lay with Nicholas Latifi's brakes, something Masi had not anticipated. In the aftermath of the crash, the brakes caught fire and the marshals needed more time to clean up the wreckage. As a result, the safety car had to stay out longer than originally planned. Due to the delay, a red flag could not be issued.

Confusion due to longer safety car

"He looked at the incident and thought, ‘that should be relatively quick to clear up’. I think where he got a bit screwed over really is that the brakes caught fire on the car as they were trying to take it off the track. So the marshals had to jump on and get the fire extinguisher out obviously, that dumped a load of stuff onto the track. That, therefore, left Michael in a position of, ‘ah I've committed to this part of the safety car, now this has happened we have got to leave the safety car out for longer than I originally planned’. If he had red-flagged it, we wouldn't have had a restart," explains the Sky Sports analyst to Express.

Because the safety car had to stay outside longer, there was confusion about the lapped cars. In the end, only a few drivers were allowed to return to their original positions, which gave Verstappen the opportunity to restart the race right behind Hamilton's car.