Formula 1 race director Michael Masi has rejected Lewis Hamilton’s suggestion that drivers wer🦂e put at risk with the late timing of the rolling restart duri💛ng the Tuscan Grand Prix as “quite offensive”.

Four drivers were eliminated during a rolling✅ start in the early stages of F1’s first-ever race at Mugello on Sunday, causing the Tuscan Grand Prix to be suspended.

The incident led reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton to suggest that the “decision-makers” were compromising drivers’ s💯afety in order to make the rolling restart more exciting, but Masi firmly dismissed the notion.

SEE ALSO: 'The worst thing I've ever seen' - F1 drivers react to restart chaos

“Abso🦋lutely not,” Masi replied when asked if F1 is spicing up the sho✨w at the expense of safety. “From an FIA perspective, safety is paramount, full stop. End of story.

“In my capacity as the race directoಞr and safety delegate, point blank, that’s where my role sits as the sport♚ing integrity and safety. And anyone that says otherwise is actually quite offensive.”

Masi said there is no need for the FIA to review the Safety Car restart procedure and stressed t𝓀he timing to return to green flag conditions was no different to similar incidents in the past.

“The๊y can criticise all thไey want,” he added. “If we have a look at a distance perspective from where the lights were extinguished to the control line, [it’s] probably not dissimilar, if not longer, than at a number of other venues.

“At the end of the day, the Safety Car lights go out where they do, the Safety Car is in pit lane, we 🎃have the 20 best drivers in the world, and as we saw earlier in the Formula 3 race, those drivers🐽 in the junior category had a very, very similar restart to what was occurring in the F1 race and navigated it quite well without incident.”

A total of 12 dr🥂ivers were issued formal warnings by the stewards for their role i✱n the restart crash.