Mercedes workforce principal Toto Wolff admits a radio message he despatched to George Russell in the course of the Austrian Grand Prix was “the one dumbest factor I’ve accomplished in 12 years”.
Russell was operating a powerful third however underneath strain from Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri within the closing phases of Sunday’s race, when Max Verstappen and Lando Norris collided. That opened up the potential for a victory that Russell would go on and safe, however Wolff had jumped on workforce radio to say “George you possibly can win this!”, inflicting Russell to answer “Simply let me f***ing drive!” because of the timing.
“I believe I do know the drivers fairly nicely and what they want at occasions to encourage or to refocus, as a result of I spend a lot time with them,” Wolff stated. “I believe I do know their psychology. However this one is the one dumbest factor I’ve accomplished in 12 years at Mercedes.
“I will likely be eternally ashamed since you take a look at the place you message the driving force and also you don’t do it throughout braking. Or in high-speed corners. However I didn’t look on the GPS I simply noticed these two taking one another out and we anticipated it, after which simply emotionally pressed the button and stated ‘we will win this’.
“I might have taken him out with that message! Think about how that might have felt. I’m emotional. I get pleasure from us doing nicely and I get pleasure from seeing Lewis [Hamilton] and George doing nicely. I used to be simply carried away with that state of affairs, however critically, embarrassing!”
The reasoning for Wolff’s pleasure was the contact between the highest two that got here after an more and more intense battle, with the workforce principal saying he wasn’t anticipating an incident when the scrap first began given the commonly good relationship between Verstappen and Norris.
“I believe we had been attempting to be rational and we had been en route for P3 and that’s the place the tempo of the automobile was and what George was in a position to extract, was a stable outcome,” he stated. “That’s what it was.
“Then clearly you see these two within the entrance, driving one another laborious. We all know they’re actually good mates and that was enjoyable to observe. That was how I perceived it at that stage.
“Then clearly it received a bit extra fierce and at a sure stage we stated, nicely it could possibly be doable that they collide, after which it actually occurred, each of them with a puncture. We couldn’t consider it after we noticed it.”
