Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff explained why he told his driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli to stop “moaning” about his clash with his team mate during the sprint race in Montreal.
Antonelli expressed his frustration after clashing with George Russell at turn one while trying to pass his team mate for the lead.
“That was very naughty,” Antonelli told his race engineer Peter Bonnington immediately after the incident.
Bonnington replied as Antonelli was preparing to attack Russell approaching turn eight. “Yeah, copy that Kimi,” he said. “Both are being advised to drive it clean.”
But as he was receiving that message Antonelli over-committed on the inside and went off again, this time falling to third place.
“That should be a penalty, I was alongside the mirror,” Antonelli added shortly afterwards. “Let’s just keep it cool,” Bonnington replied.
Bonnington spoke again shortly afterwards: “Let’s just get this back under control, Kimi,” he said. “Focus on Norris, focus on the driving.” That prompted another reply from the driver: “Yeah it’s not fair, he pushed me off.”
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This proved too much for Wolff: “Kimi, concentrate on the driving, please, and not on the radio moaning.”
After the race finished Antonelli voiced his displeasure with Russell again, provoking another reply from Wolff. “If we need to race like this, then good to know,” said Antonelli.
“Kimi, now is the fourth time to talk about this. We talk about it internally and not on the radio, okay?”
Wolff justified his interventions after the race, saying he wanted to prevent an escalating row between the drivers.
“All of the media wants to come out now with ‘Star Wars’, and that’s going to be the headlines everywhere,” he told the official Formula 1 channel. “So having the message once is okay, a second time I can kind of get, but if you come a third and a fourth time, that’s not good to have that out there.”
The Mercedes boss said he will discuss the incident with his drivers. “First of all, I enjoyed also to watch it, we want to see racing and overtaking.
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“For me these moments are super-good because there is so much we can learn from this. I’ll take the drivers aside and say how do you see that, how do we want to handle it in the future? Are we racing each other like it’s a third car, another team mate, fair, that is the rule now, or are we racing with each other differently? Would you give your team mate the space if it was another car, if you’re fighting the championship, or not? And I think it’s up to them also to come up with the rules going forward.”
Penalty box
Antonelli claimed he was sufficiently alongside Russell when he attacked on the outside of the corner to be entitled to room.
F1’s racing guidelines start that in order to be given room when attacking on the outside the overtaking car must “have its front axle ahead of the front axle of the other car at the apex”, “be driven in a controlled manner from entry, to apex, and to exit” and “be able to make the corner within track limits.”
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