‘I have not resigned’: F1 race director claims he was sacked in deepening FIA staff exodus

Formula 1 will have a new race director from next weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix after Niels Wittich unexpectedly left the FIA with immediate effect this week.

The governing body said in a brief statement that Wittich has “stepped down … to pursue new opportunities”.

But speaking to Motorsport Magazine, the German administrator said he had been sacked shortly before the FIA announced his departure.

“I have not resigned,” he insisted.

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The BBC has reported that Wittich’s relationship with FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem relationship had broken down, leading to his unusual midseason exit.

The German administrator is the latest in a long list of high-profile departures from the FIA under Ben Sulayem’s presidency.

The staff exodus began in December 2023 with Deborah Mayer quitting as head of Women in Motorsport Commission after less than two years in the role.

She was followed out the door by sporting director Steve Nielsen, who lasted less than a year in his position before joining Formula 1 as a consultant.

Technical director for single seaters, Tim Goss, then left his role in January to join RB as chief technical officer.

In February the FIA lost governance and regulatory director Pierre Ketterer and head of commercial legal affairs Edward Floydd, both of whom were involved in negotiations over the Concorde agreement, the document that binds the governing body, F1 and the teams together.

In May Natalie Robyn quit as CEO just 18 months after being appointed as the FIA’s first ever chief executive by Ben Sulayem.

Just last month Luke Skipper, director of communications, and Jacob Bangsgaard, secretary general of mobility, both left the governing body.

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TENSIONS IN FORMULA 1 HAVE BEEN GROWING

The departures have combined to markedly increase speculation on Ben Sulayem’s presidency, which has proved controversial particularly in Formula 1 circles.

His early days at the helm were coloured by a sudden and harsh crackdown on drivers wearing jewellery and incorrect underwear, which memorably came to a head with Lewis Hamilton leading a press conference protest bedazzled with two earrings, three watches, four necklaces and eight rings and Sebastian Vettel wearing his underwear over his racing overalls.

At the end of that season the FIA updated the international sporting code, the overarching governing document for all motorsport, to ban drivers from making “political, religious and personal statements or comments” without permission.

Last year Ben Sulayem earnt a rare legal rebuke from Formula 1 for tweeting about the sport being overvalued, with the FIA strictly restricted to regulatory and not commercial matters per its lease agreement to Liberty Media.

He subsequently opened expressions of interests for new teams to join the sport against the wishes of F1. The FIA approved Michael Andretti’s bid to join the grid, but the American was subsequently knocked back by Formula 1 per the two-stage approval process.

The governing body was later dragged into arbitration by unsuccessful bidder Hitech Grand Prix, the proceedings of which has been kept secret.

The year ended with the FIA dramatically increasing the maximum fine payable by a competitor to €1 million (A$1.63 million), causing widespread consternation among drivers.

Ben Sulayem later launched a short-lived probed into alleged inappropriate sharing of confidential information between F1-employed Susie Wolff and her husband, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. The inquest appeared to have been based on a single media report and was dropped after a rare unified gesture of support for the Wolff family by all 10 teams.

The 2024 season started relatively quietly, with relations between the FIA and F1 having been said to have improved through the year, but recently the president got himself caught up in controversy over his desire to see drivers swear less in public, with Ben Sulayem chastised for telling Autosport that swearing made people look like “rappers” in what was widely interpreted as racial language.

Max Verstappen has since been given a community service order for describing his car as “f***ed” during the Thursday press conference at the Singapore Grand Prix, while Charles Leclerc was given a €10,000 fine, half of which is suspended for a year, for swearing at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

The punishments for swearing tipped the Grand Prix Drivers Association over the edge, with the drivers union issuing a rare public statement last week making several pointed criticisms of the Ben Sulayem regime.

“We urge the FIA president to consider his own tone and language when talking to our member drivers, or indeed about them, whether in a public forum or otherwise,” it read.

“Further, our members are adults. They do not need to be given instructions via the media, about matters as trivial as the wearing of jewellery or underpants.

“The GPDA has, on countless occasions, expressed its view that driver monetary fines are not appropriate for our sport.

“For the past three years, we have called upon the FIA president to share the details and strategy regarding how the FIA’s financial fines are allocated and where the funds are spent. We have also relayed our concerns about the negative image financial fines bring to the sport. “We once again request that the FIA president provides financial transparency and direct, open dialogue with us.

“All stakeholders (FIA, F1, the teams and the GPDA) should jointly determine how and where the money is spent for the benefit of our sport.

“The GPDA wishes to collaborate in a constructive way with all the stakeholders, including the FIA president, in order to promote our great sport for the benefit of everyone who works in it, pays for it, watches it, and indeed loves it.

“We are playing our part.”

The letter is sure to dominate the lead-up to the next race in Las Vegas next weekend alongside discussion of race director Wittich’s sudden departure.

RACE DIRECTOR TROUBLES ARE DEEPER THAN ONE PERSON

Wittich will be replaced by Formula 2 and Formula 3 race director Rui Marques for the rest of the season.

“Rui brings a wealth of experience, having previously served as track marshal, scrutineer, national and international steward, deputy race director and race director in various championships,” the FIA said in a statement.

Marques will be Formula 1’s fourth race director in as many years amid the FIA’s continued struggles to replace the late Charlie Whiting at the top of race control.

Whiting had worked as a senior FIA official for more than 30 years, including more than 20 years as race director and safety delegate, when he died suddenly on the eve of the 2019 season.

Though succession planning had been taking place in the later years of his tenure, it’s since become clear that the role became moulded around his unique abilities and decades of experience, making it extremely difficult for just one person to replace him.

Michael Masi was tasked with the complete role from 2019 anyway, heading race control until his controversial handling of the 2021 title-deciding Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

An internal investigation found that Masi had acted in good faith in restarting the race from a late safety car contrary to the rules and that the role of race director was insufficiently supported by the FIA.

While the governing body responded by opening a Geneva-based ‘remote operations centre’ — likened to the F1 equivalent of VAR but rarely mentioned since — Masi nonetheless ended up under the bus and out of a job.

Without an obvious successor so soon after having taken on the role, Masi was replaced by two officials — Wittich and Eduardo Freitas, respectively the then DTM and World Endurance Championship race directors — in a job-sharing arrangement intended to upskill both.

But Freitas was dropped from the role after the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix — also a title-deciding race — after a recovery vehicle was sent onto the track in treacherously wet conditions before all cars had caught the safety car, a situation that came perilously close to disaster for Pierre Gasly.

It was the most serious error in a chaotically handled Sunday run in the aftermath of a typhoon, with the grand prix getting underway in undrivable conditions and subsequently ended with the too-early waving of the chequered flag in what became a time-limited race, leaving the paddock unsure whether Verstappen had scored enough points to win the championship.

While a subsequent inquest avoided blaming Freitas for the mistakes, it confirmed the FIA would drop its rotating race directorship model.

Wittich has headed race control on his own ever since, and though his tenure has lacked the flashpoints of his predecessors, it has coincided with a growing general malaise over the FIA’s governance of Formula 1.

Most recently this has manifested in widespread dissatisfaction with the approach to wheel-to-wheel racing, bubbling over with Lando Norris’s penalty for passing Max Verstappen off the track at the United States Grand Prix.

GPDA director George Russell said afterwards that 19 of 20 drivers — Verstappen presumably being the outlier — agreed that the Dutchman deserved at least the same five-second penalty for forcing Norris off the track.

Meetings with Wittich, the stewards, team sporting directors and representatives from Formula 1 ensued, with the FIA agreeing to rewrite its driving guidelines in time for the Qatar Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the season.

Drivers called for a new interpretation of the rules to be instituted sooner, however, and in the race Verstappen received a pair of 10-second penalties for forcing Norris off the track in similar circumstances.

It is unclear whether this situation played a role in Wittich’s departure, though the race director does not rule whether a driver has broken the rules or hand out penalties, that being the sole purview of the stewards.