Max Verstappen ‘surprised’ at sudden F1 race director change

Max Verstappen has expressed his surprise at the sudden departure of F1 race director Niels Wittich.

F1’s governing body the FIA announced Wittich had left his role with immediate effect on the eve of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, stating the German had stepped down in order to “pursue new opportunities”.

But Wittich claimed he had not left voluntarily and instead had been fired with three races to go. He has been replaced by Formula 2 and Formula 3 race director Rui Marques.

The timing of the FIA’s decision has surprised F1 drivers, including three-time world champion Verstappen, who told Sky Sports F1: “I think everyone was very surprised to see that with three races to go. But you have to ask the FIA.”

Following the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, Grand Prix Drivers’ Association released a statement urging the FIA to treat its members “like adults” and for president Mohammed Ben Sulayem to “consider his own tone and language when talking to our member drivers, or indeed about them”.

Verstappen, who can win his fourth consecutive world championship this weekend in Las Vegas, wants progress to be made sooner rather than later.

“We just wanted to send a letter out to make sure that everyone is aware of our concerns and what we want to work on and we’ll see what comes out of that,” Verstappen explained.

“At the moment of course nothing has happened. I think there was a lot going on with the FIA anyway, that they had to deal. We’ll see now in the coming races and we’ll keep engaging. We’ll keep talking to them and go from there.”

GPDA director George Russell said in the pre-event press conference that the FIA is yet to respond to the letter and admitted the drivers are “a little bit fed up with the whole situation”.

"Getting things to change or promises upheld seems slightly more challenging," he said. "Maybe the FIA or the president did not recognise how seriously we all felt.

"Over the course of 20 races this year and even last year we spoke about a number of topics, all the drivers, we feel pretty similar, we know what we want from the sport and the directions it has been heading and we feel we want a small U-turn on a number of topics and we want to work together with the FIA on this.

"We felt that has not been happening at all from the president."