F1 News: Did Ted Kravitz Cross The Line As Red Bull Boycotts Sky Sports?
Sky Sports reporter, Ted Kravitz, upset Red Bull with his comments during his Ted Kravitz Notebook post-race show at the Austin Grand Prix. The comments about how Lewis Hamilton was "robbed" at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix led to Red Bull refusing to carry out any interviews with Sky Sports at the Mexican Grand Prix.
Kravitz said:
“[Hamilton] doesn't win a race all year, and then finally comes back at a track where he could win the first race all year, battling the same guy who won the race he was robbed in the previous year, and manages to finish ahead of him.
"What a script and a story that would have been. But that's not the way the script turned out today, was it? Because the guy that beat him after being robbed actually overtook him, because he's got a quicker car, because of engineering and Formula One and design, and pretty much because of [Adrian Newey, Red Bull's chief technical officer] over there."
Red Bull's decision to boycott Sky Sports has divided fans and has raised the question of whether Kravitz did cross the line or not.
Kravitz is referring to the controversial 2021 Abu Dhabi GP where Max Verstappen took the championship win. It had been extremely close between him and Hamilton all year.
In the final stages of the race, Hamilton was running in first behind a safety car on old tyres and Verstappen was P2 on new tyres. The race director at the time, Michael Masi, made the decision to let the lapped cars between Hamilton and Verstappen un-lap themselves before the safety car ended, but none of the other lapped cars were allowed.
Usually, the decision is made for all lapped cars to un-lap themselves as the safety car is ending, however, that would have taken so long that the race would have most likely ended under the safety car, giving Hamilton the win.
After complaints of the decision flooded in, the FIA made a statement addressing the decision by Masi, saying it was human error but that the results of the race would not be changed. The report stated:
“The process of identifying lapped cars has up until now been a manual one and human error led to the fact that not all cars were allowed to un-lap themselves.”
During the post race interviews, Verstappen was asked what he thought of the unusual decision. He responded:
"Well, everything was clear so why would you then run another lap behind the safety car? It’s just when everything is clear you have to release the track so I think that’s a fair point from the race direction. Of course, now it worked for me but it can also work against me, I know that."
The FIA carried out an investigation into the situation after the Abu Dhabi GP and they later announced that they were parting ways with Michael Masi.
The 2021 F1 season was incredibly close between Verstappen and Hamilton and after the controversial end, the FIA received a lot of backlash.
The fact that the FIA removed Masi from his role as race director would infer that he made the wrong decision leading to Verstappen's victory. While Verstappen has retained this championship win after a year of brilliant performance, some fans would argue that Kravitz was speaking the truth. If you look at the statements released by F1, it's hard to argue against this.