Britain’s Steve Nielsen left a senior F1 position to become FIA sporting director
Steve Nielsen has resigned from his role as sporting director of Formula 1’s governing body the FIA less than a year since being appointed.
He was appointed in January 2023 with a mandate to improve the FIA’s race control operations after a series of controversies in recent years.
No reason has been given for Nielsen’s departure but sources say he was unhappy with several parts of his role.
Nielsen, 59, was unavailable for comment when approached by BBC Sport.
F1 insiders have told BBC Sport that Nielsen felt the FIA was not willing to make the changes he felt were required to make its race-control operations fit for purpose.
The teams and drivers all backed Nielsen’s move to the FIA and are likely to be dismayed by his decision to leave, and concerned about its potential ramifications.
At the Belgian Grand Prix this year, Mercedes driver George Russell, a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, said Nielsen had been “a really great addition” to the FIA’s operations team.
Nielsen’s departure, communicated to the FIA internally on 21 December, is the second from a senior role in the governing body in the last two weeks.
On 13 December, Deborah Mayer resigned from her position as head of the FIA’s commission for women.
The FIA did not respond to a request for comment on the subject of either Nielsen or Mayer.
The resignations come in the wake of FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem finding himself caught in the latest of a series of controversies since he was elected in December 2021.
Earlier this month, the FIA launched a compliance investigation into Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff and his wife Susie Wolff, the F1 Academy director, on the basis of “media speculation centred on the allegation of information of a confidential nature being passed to an F1 team principal from a member of FOM personnel”.
But its position was undermined when Mercedes and F1 put out strongly-worded statements rejecting their accusation, followed by identically worded and co-ordinated statements from all Mercedes’ rival teams saying they had made no such complaint.
Two days after announcing the investigation, the FIA put out a second statement saying the inquiry had been concluded.
Nielsen was appointed in a restructure of the FIA’s F1 operations, which named Nikolas Tombazis as single-seater director.
Tombazis, who had previously been the FIA’s F1 technical director, was Nielsen’s immediate boss.
Nielsen joined the FIA after a long career in the sport, in which he established himself as one of its most respected functionaries.
He had been sporting director for the Tyrell, Benetton, Renault and Williams teams before joining commercial rights holder F1 in 2017, following the sport’s takeover by US group Liberty Media, under the same job title. He was recruited by former managing director Ross Brawn and president Stefano Domenciali.
Among many other things, Nielsen played a key role in helping organise a 2020 season in the midst of Covid-19. F1 was the first international sport to resume activities during the pandemic.