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Former world champion Jacques Villeneuve was one of the few people to defend the former FIA Race Director Michael Masi in the aftermath of the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP.
Masi will forever remain a controversial figure in the sport for his involvement in the handling of the final laps of the 2021 title battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi.
His call to end the safety car on the last lap before allowing all the lapped cars to cross gave the advantage to the Red Bull driver, who passed Hamilton on the final lap to win his first world championship.
Villeneuve told La Gazzetta dello Sport last year:
“Michael Masi should not be removed. He worked under pressure with the two team principals, in particular Toto Wolff, who kept shouting in his ears for the last five races. He did everything right, or almost right, after that Safety Car. The only downside was he could have had everyone split a lap earlier, but it was right to restart the race."
Jacques Villeneuve praises Max Verstappen and compares him to Fernando Alonso
The former world champion stated that Max Verstappen has "extraordinary" energy on the track and has a consistency similar to Fernando Alonso.
"He always has extraordinary energy, he never gives up. And he makes a difference. Verstappen has always been like that, for years. He’s at his best for the whole season. It’s hallucinating how he does it, maybe only Alonso was comparable," Jacques Villeneuve said.
"If you look at most of the other drivers they all have ups and downs, often with quite a bit of difference between them. Not him. I really don’t know where he gets all that energy from. When he is like that, which is practically all the time, he is unbeatable,” he continued.
Villeneuve further stated that even Lewis Hamilton never had a "perfect year" like Max Verstappen:
“He goes very up and down in performance, it depends on the weekends. But he’s always been like that, every season, even when he was winning. He’s never had a perfect year like Verstappen,” he added.
It's fascinating to see Jacques Villeneuve compare Verstappen to Alonso and not with other greats like Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton, who consistently had more dominant years than the Spanish driver. But it is hard to disagree with Villeneuve's statements about Verstappen's excellence this season.
