General
FIA unrest appears to be complete: F2 race director summarily sacked
- GPblog.com
Things are rumbling internally at the FIA, according to The Telegraph Saturday morning. Gwen Bourcier, who played the role of Head of Operations (maintaining contact with the team managers during F1 races) and race director of Formula 2, was dismissed with immediate effect last week. There seems to be no really clear reason for this and so there is talk of a disturbance.
Bourcier would not have received any warning or indication of impending dismissal prior to his dismissal. As a result, several FIA employees have been very critical of the regime of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, since December 2021 the new FIA president after the departure of Jean Todt.
The staff at the FIA seems to be a bit fed up with it. They already found the departure of Masi unjustified and now Bourcier has to leave as well, which is also unjustified according to them. Amongst others, the workload would be too high. This is not the first riot, as earlier this season there was also much ado about the arrival of the new interim secretary general Shaila-Ann Rao, who came over as the right-hand man of Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff.
There was also the soap opera over whether or not Lewis Hamilton should be wearing jewellery, the FOM and the FIA are at odds over the number of sprint races in 2023 and the drivers have repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction about how the race control is functioning this year under the new race directors Niels Wittich and Eduardo Freitas.
FIA responds
De Telegraaf asked the FIA for a response and it got it. "We are building a new structure for the race control team after the departure of Michael Masi. This is part of that process. It is not unusual during a transition period that there are changes in terms of operations or personnel," said the governing body's statement.