21/02/2022
NEWS STORY
After being dropped as F1 race director, Motorsport Australia has thrown Michael Masi a potential lifeline.
Whatever way you want to look at it, last week's announcement by FIA president, Mohammed Ben Sulayem that Michael Masi was no longer F1 race director and would be found a new role within the FIA, effectively meant that the Australian had been sacked.
Whether we will learn the truth of what really happened that evening last December, whether we will hear Masi's own explanation, remains to be seen, but for now the man has essentially been thrown under the bus.
However, the man who was hand-picked for the role by his esteemed predecessor, Charlie Whiting, has been thrown a lifeline by Motorsport Australia, where CEO Eugene Arocca has made clear Masi would be welcomed home with open arms.
"He's a personal friend," Arocca tells Speedcafe. "I've known him as long as I've been involved in motorsport, which goes back ten years, and we've become good buddies. So it's personally disappointing and devastating for me to see what has occurred.
"I've got to be very mindful that I'm not part of a process," he continues, "I wasn't privy to the information that was being considered by the FIA, but on a personal level if you see a mate, and particularly an Australian, have to go through what he's gone through, I've got a certain amount of empathy and disappointment and frustration and anger.
"Unlike many others, he's actually been administering, involved in managing motorsport for many, many years. That's a good thing. He's got an extensive background and history. He's very insightful, intelligent, and able to make decisions in the heat of a moment. That's something that people may have lost in some of the debate.
"It's really easy to be a critic on the side lines thinking what he went through when he was making those decisions," adds Arocca. "There would be other people that would be completely paralysed in exactly the same circumstances. He made the call. That is the first character trait of a strong leader."
revealing that he has been in communication with Masi since last week's announcement, Arocca admits that his friend has taken the whole affair hard.
"I can't speak on his behalf, but I would say that one of the more difficult elements of all this, let's call it this incident, happened late last year, some three months ago now, and to a large degree it's been a process that hasn't leant itself to really being in a good frame of mind.
"It's been a tortuous two or three months of discussion, debate, criticism, public airing of view. And you have to have a hide that's pretty thick to be able to withstand all that and come out the other end feeling okay.
"Gladly, based on the fact that he responded this morning, and he was obviously pretty flat, he's a man who's got fantastic resilience."
Looking ahead, he says: "We would love to tap into his knowledge at any level. He's just an elite talent that would be wasted to the sport if he's not used in some capacity, and so we'll keep an open mind.
"At the moment, we're obviously concentrating on the year ahead, and when he's decided what he wants to do, no doubt amongst many others, he'll be contacted by not only us but by others.
"He's just such, I'll use the word elite. He's officiated for three years in one of the most public, high pressure sporting events with an element of danger in the world, and he's done it during a pandemic with significant levels of travel, stress, other duties, and in my view that stands well on his resume for any employer anywhere in the world."