Furious Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto said the FIA had been "caught sleeping" as he raged about the anticlimactic end to the Italian Grand Prix behind a safety car.
The yellow flags were brought out by a mechanical issue for Daniel Ricciardo, which saw him park his McLaren at the side of the track. As marshals failed to get the car out of gear to wheel it away, a recovery was needed and so the safety car was announced.
And that's how the race finished, as it wasn't cleared in time for the safety car to go into the pits and allow any racing on the final lap. As a result, Charles Leclerc never had the chance to try to overtake Max Verstappen and deliver what would have been a famous result for Ferrari at Monza.
Speaking after the race, team chief Binotto was very unhappy about the way it was handled. "Today we had all the conditions to have a restart of the race, I don't know why they waited so long," he told Sky Italy. "The FIA has been caught sleeping, maybe they are not yet ready to deal with these situations."
And he was just as upset as he spoke to Sky's English pundit team. "I'm disappointed for the ending – I think we could have finished the race differently," he reasoned. "Finishing behind the safety car is never great, not for us, not for F1, the show. And I think there was plenty of time for the FIA to act differently today.
"There was no reason not to release the cars behind the safety car and the leader. It's fully safe to run on the track. To wait so much is simply wrong, and not great for the sport.
"After Abu Dhabi last year, we had long discussions over how to improve because the final aim is to restart the race as soon as possible, in a safe manner. Today I think it certainly could have happened. The FIA has changed a lot in that area, but still I think they need more experience and they need to a better job, because F1 deserves a better job in that respect."
Leclerc cut a frustrated figure as he himself faced the cameras. "Overall I think the pace wasn't bad today, but we've been very unlucky with the virtual safety car ending in the middle of the first stop... unfortunately we did not get the full benefit," he said.
"For the last laps, from my point of view it was clear that I was expecting a restart, but maybe there are things in the background that I don't know and maybe that's why."
