Masi committed two “sins” and the most apparent sin is that he vacillated on letting lapped cars through, but in the end, that decision did not hurt Mercedes or work in favor of Red Bull.

Mercedes was never going to pit under a safety car because they would have given up track position. That call was clearly made and discussed over the radio. They gambled that the race was most liekly going to finish under the safety car.

Masi should have allowed all the cars to unlap themselves once the safety car was out on track but for some reason originally said no. The lapped cars would be given blue flags, but by the time Max got past them all, Lewis would be down the road. This would have been a patently unfair result for Max and Red Bull persuaded Masi to let cars past. That was the right call. The problem is that there was not enough time to let all the cars past so the decision was made to let just five cars to unlap and allow one lap of racing.

Who did this hurt? Only the cars which were not allowed to unlap.

Any car which was not allowed to unlap was denied the opportunity to overtake the cars which were allowed to unlap, thereby costing them points. I have not figured out who was in what position, but assuming no one was two laps down, the sixth car unable to unlap was really screwed over.

Whether Masi allowed all the cars to unlap if the call had been made early on, or 5 cars to unlap with a late call, did not hurt Mercedes or Red Bull. Both would have ended with Max right behind Lewis.

I also think it was disingenuous of Toto to radio Masi and ask for no safety car. You either need one or you don’t and that is based on the safety of the drivers and marshals. That was a horrible radio call to hear and went beyond mere lobbying.

The bottom line is that both Mercedes and Red Bull made strategy calls based on the information they had, knowing that there were a lot of variables, and Mercedes got it wrong. There should be no asterisk by Max’s WDC and the FIA did not hand him the win. Mercedes were unlucky with their call.

What should have happened, as others have stated here, was to red flag the race. Both Hamilton and Max would have come in, switched to new soft tires, and we would have been treated to the best five laps in F1 history to decide a WDC. That would have been fair to both drivers and removed the FIA from helping or hurting one team or another. This is Masi’s primary sin. He should have allowed the race to finish on equitable terms.

There were many unlucky occurrences during the race year, in addition to many questionable calls by the race stewards, all of which went into a tie in points at the end of this year. We could just as easily fixate on something which happened months ago, which cost either driver some points, and thus had a bearing on the outcome of this season. The fact that there was a call made in the final lap doesn’t make it any more of less important in the grand scheme of things.

Lastly, I will say that while I have always been a huge fan of Hamilton’s driving, and less a fan of some of his political positions, I do think he showed a TREMENDOUS amount of class at the end of the race. He showed a tremendous amount of maturity and I think he earned himself many converts. It was hard not to feel sorry for him. In the end I think he was just unlucky.