Christian Horner has reopened Formula 1’s most explosive modern controversy, admitting that he deliberately turned up the pressure on race director Michael Masi during the closing moments of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, as Red Bull scrambled to give Max Verstappen one last shot at wresting the world championship from Lewis Hamilton.
In his upcoming memoir, Drive, the former Red Bull team principal revisits the extraordinary finale that split the sport, left Mercedes furious and ultimately cost Masi his job.
Horner's account offers a revealing glimpse into the tactical battle unfolding away from the track, where the championship was being fought not only by two drivers but also through competing appeals to the man controlling the race.
The stakes could hardly have been higher. Verstappen and Hamilton arrived at Yas Marina level on points, with the title to be decided in a winner-takes-all showdown.
Hamilton appeared to have the championship within reach until Nicholas Latifi crashed his Williams in the closing stages of the event, triggering a safety car that would transform the race – and Formula 1 history.
For Horner, the incident initially looked like a potential death blow to Verstappen's hopes. But rather than accept defeat, he decided to intervene.
‘Come on, Michael’: the pressure behind the restart
With Hamilton leading and the clock ticking down, Verstappen had pitted for fresh tyres during the race’s neutralisation. The problem was that five lapped cars remained between the two title contenders, leaving the Dutchman with precious little opportunity to attack if the race resumed with only one lap remaining.
Horner describes his reaction to Latifi's crash in Drive, making no secret of his alarm at the prospect of Verstappen being denied a final opportunity to fight back.
“My heart sank,” Horner wrote. “That meant that Max would have to pass all five cars before getting to Lewis, which was impossible in one racing lap.
“I decided to apply some more pressure on race control. ‘Come on, Michael, we need to get this race going; why aren’t we getting these lapped cars out the way?’”
That admission is particularly significant because it confirms that Horner was consciously trying to influence the decision-making process at a moment when the championship hung in the balance.
Masi ultimately allowed only the lapped cars separating Verstappen and Hamilton to overtake the safety car, before bringing it in and restarting the race with one lap remaining.
The decision departed from the usual procedure for handling lapped cars, and the resulting restart gave Verstappen precisely the opportunity Red Bull had been pushing for.
On fresher tyres, Verstappen swept past Hamilton to claim his first world championship.
Mercedes vehemently protested the result, and although its subsequent appeal was withdrawn, the controversy continued to reverberate through the sport. Masi was removed from his position by the FIA ahead of the 2022 season.
Horner hits the radio button
Horner's memoir also revisits the communications battle between the two rival teams and race control.
Speaking on the recent High Performance Podcast, he explained that the broadcast of team-radio exchanges during that season had alerted him to the fact that Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was often communicating directly with Masi.
Former FIA race director Michael Masi.
Horner said that discovery prompted him to get involved himself, despite having previously avoided direct conversations with the race director's predecessor, Charlie Whiting.
“Hang on, that’s not on? You’re putting pressure on the referee here,” Horner said. “So I was like to our team manager, ‘Get me on the line’, because I never spoke to Charlie Whiting in 15 years that he was there.”
Read also: Horner reveals ‘secret meeting’, Hamilton’s bid to join Red BullThe comparison with Whiting is telling. Horner was portraying his intervention not simply as an attempt to secure a sporting advantage, but as a response to what he perceived as an imbalance in access to the official making the crucial decisions.
That does not, however, settle the question of whether the eventual restart was legitimate. Masi's handling of the safety-car procedure was subsequently scrutinised in the FIA's investigation, which concluded that human error had affected the process and that the race director had made a mistake in allowing the restart without all the lapped cars completing the required procedure.
'It wasn’t our fault’
Horner, for his part, remains adamant that Red Bull should not be blamed for what followed. He argues that the decision rested with Masi, who had the authority to control the race, even if the precise way the situation unfolded was unprecedented.
“He made the decision, which was within his remit, as per the regulations to be able to do, but it had never been done before, to allow the cars between Max and Lewis to unlap,” Horner said.
“It wasn’t our fault but we’re in a position where we’ve got this one lap to have a crack at it, and if anyone is going to deliver you on a lap like that, it’s Max. What happened, happened.”
That final shrug is unlikely to persuade those who believe Hamilton was robbed of an eighth world championship by the handling of the closing laps.
Nor will Horner's admission that he deliberately applied pressure to Masi do much to cool a debate that has endured for years.
But the account exposes the ruthless reality of a championship fight in which neither side was prepared to leave anything to chance.
Verstappen ultimately delivered on the one-lap opportunity that emerged.
Whether the end justified the means remains one of Formula 1's most bitterly contested questions – and Horner's decision to place the episode at the opening of Drive suggests he has no intention of letting the controversy fade quietly into the history books.
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