Horner admits he pressured Masi to restart the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP that handed Verstappen the title

Christian Horner has confirmed in his memoir, Drive, that he deliberately pressured then-race director Michael Masi to restart the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after a late safety car, a decision that ultimately handed Max Verstappen his first Formula 1 world championship over Lewis Hamilton.

Verstappen and Hamilton arrived at the Yas Marina Circuit level on points for the 2021 title. In the closing laps, Hamilton led comfortably, but a late safety car triggered by Nicholas Latifi’s Williams crash allowed Verstappen to pit for fresh tyres. With five lapped cars sitting between the two title contenders, the prospect of Verstappen clearing them all in a single racing lap appeared remote.

“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?’”

Masi’s response — unlapping only the five cars between Verstappen and Hamilton and restarting the race with one lap remaining — proved decisive. Verstappen swept past Hamilton on his new tyres to claim the title. The move drew immediate protests from Mercedes and remains one of the most debated calls in the sport’s history. Masi did not return as race director for the 2022 season.

Speaking on the High Performance Podcast, Horner also revealed that he only learned during that same period, once radio communications to race control began to be broadcast publicly, that Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff had been speaking directly to Masi as well.

“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.”

Horner was careful to frame Red Bull’s conduct as reactive rather than improper, and maintained that the final call rested entirely with Masi. “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,” he 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.”