“You can’t order them on Amazon”

FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem says the introduction of a new Officials Department is of great importance as they cannot be ready-made.

The FIA announced on Monday it was introducing a new Officials Department to start a production line of trained race officials.

It comes amid calls to have more stewards available to oversee races, especially with the current 24-race calendar.

“It is so important to have it”, Ben Sulayem told Motorsport.com in an exclusive interview at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. “You can’t go randomly, you can’t go on: it’s just the way it is. There has to be an improvement.”

“Then if you look at our officials and race directors: we have an issue and the issue is that we don’t have [enough] race directors. So can you just simply go and order them? No. I said it in one of my tweets. I said: ‘You cannot order them on Amazon or Google.’ No, you have to make them, you have to train them.”

Ben Sulayem says it’s ‘dangerous’ for F1 to rely on having one race director at a Grand Pix. “If we take only what we are doing today, now here is the Formula 1, you cannot rely on one. God forbid something happens to him and then by the time you have someone [here in case of an emergency], who is far away…”

“So what do you do? Bring someone else in who is not 100%? Let’s say, you have one or two spares. How long will it take to fly them here if something happens, God forbid, anything with health or something? So we have to be able to meet the level of demand and have to have a pathway that’s good.”

Niels Wittich, Race Director, FIA

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The department will support the recruitment of officiating talent at a regional level. However, Ben Sulayem concedes it’s not easy to find new volunteers, a problem which he thinks has increased after the pandemic. “Now people choose where to give and how to give their time. So they prefer to go to hospitals, to help people. But then, when they do want to do it for the love of the sport, do we then go: ‘Sorry,’ and just stick to the old system? No.”

Ben Suyalem feels the introduction of an Officials Department, which will cover all levels of officials from the start of the 2025 season, was long overdue.

He added: “I said ‘[It is] amazing, we have departments for many things, but we don’t have a department for one thing which is like a spinal cord for us, which is the stewarding and race direction.’ So now we have a proper department.”

Alongside the new department, a review and update of necessary regulations will be made, which will define criteria for obtaining, maintaining, and progressing through license grades.

Ben Sulayem feels that in the past this caused hazardous situations. “‘Oh, we need another race director, just bring him.’ Or: ‘We need another steward, just take him.’ It doesn’t go like this. It’s dangerous. It’s wrong.”

“Then there are a lot of good people, young people, women and men, who want to be involved in the sport. But you need to guide them, you need to train them, you need also to reach out to them. This department will be in charge officially. Because you can do it with volunteers, but you would need to have a proper department for it, which is dedicated to it. It’s needed. I don’t know how we ran actually for many years without having a proper department.”