Opinion: will ‘VAR’ solve or complicate F1’s racing rulebook?

Michael Masi, F1’s phenomenally softly spoken race director, is out. After he failed to follow the safety car rules at the 2021 season showdown in Abu Dhabi, he’d have needed a security entourage bigger than the US president’s just to sneak past Toto Wolff’s motorhome. Masi won’t be in charge of laying down F1’s law in 2022.

Instead, F1’s new race directors will get the benefit of a ‘Virtual Race Control Room’. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem explains: “Like the Video Assistance Referee (VAR) in football, it will be positioned in one of the FIA offices as a backup outside the circuit.

“In real-time connection with the FIA F1 race director, it will help to apply the sporting regulations using the most modern technological tools.”

So, hi-def replays, super-slow-mo, and more camera angles than a Michael Bay fight scene. Basically, no excuse for getting a penalty call wrong…

Like the ‘hawkeye’ tech used in tennis, the systems are supposed to eliminate obvious human errors. The ball is either out of play, or it’s not. The player is offside, or they aren’t. Thing is, VAR’s implementation into football has been steeped in controversy.

Mayhem ensues as lines are drawn on freeze-framed replays to prove my striker gained an advantage against your defender because his fringe was offside.

F1 likes to portray itself as the most technically advanced sport on the planet: gladiatorial duels of impossibly fit, fast-reacting athletes piloting 1,000bhp hybrid spaceships millimetres apart at 200 miles an hour, where a tenth of a second can be the difference between hero and zero. In theory, VAR tech should fit well. It’s nerdy. F1 is full of nerds.

But will it? In football, there are often lingering delays while a goal is checked for a foul or offside, neutering the celebration. Will you be able to jump off the sofa in delight if George Russell sends a last-lap Eau Rouge overtake round the outside of Max Verstappen? Or have to sit tight while the video-police check he didn’t damage the astroturf?

Team radio is going to be saltier than ever, as the drivers now have a vested interest in demanding the powers-that-be observe the action replay. Why risk an overtake when you can hold back and wait for the chap in front to get the racing equivalent of a yellow card?

F1 needs reliable, honest stewarding. The end of last season was a farce, and thanks to social media there’s an army of screen-wielding armchair experts ready to crucify or cancel anyone who costs their favourite driver a point. Is video refereeing the answer to getting us back to the good old days of the late Charlie Whiting’s race umpiring? It’s another subplot to what should be a great season of racing.

I know who’ll be happiest about all of this, though. Netflix. Cutting together the highlights reel for season 5 of Drive To Survive just got really, really easy.