Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff has given his verdict on the clash between Kimi Antonelli and George Russell in the Canadian Grand Prix Sprint, stating “you can’t expect to have a lion in the car and a puppy outside” regarding the Italian teenager.
Russell and Antonelli locked out the front row for Saturday’s 23-lap Sprint in Montreal, with Russell eventually taking victory as Antonelli dropped to third behind McLaren’s Lando Norris.
The major talking point came at the start of Lap 6, as Antonelli made a move around the outside of Russell into Turn 1 before the pair made contact and Antonelli cut across the grass at Turn 2.Antonelli, who led the standings by 20 points ahead of the weekend, then locked-up at Turn 8 and bounced across the grass, dropping behind Norris and complaining multiple times over the radio to his team about the Russell incident.
The outbursts prompted Wolff to come over the radio himself to tell Antonelli that the incident would be talked about internally post-race.
“Drivers have emotions, obviously, you are so upset about being pushed off or not having left the space,” Wolff told F1 TV.”All of the media wants to come out now with Star Wars and that’s going to be headlines everywhere.
“So having the message once is okay, a second time I can kind of get but if you come a third and fourth time [complaining over the radio] that’s not good to have that out there.”
Despite the incident and outburst from Antonelli, who believed he had been pushed off by Russell when speaking immediatley after the Sprint, Wolff made it clear he does not want to deter Antonelli from fighting.
“I don’t want to hold him back at all,” added Wolff. “I think also that he went for Lando absolutely. So when you analyse it, going into Turn 1 with George, he had the nose ahead but then obviously on the brakes, and we’ve seen this with Max [Verstappen], where you kind of roll it in a little bit to be ahead.”But is that a corner where you would expect somebody to leave the door open? Probably not.
“Nobody would have done that. The same with Lando, you can see it just doesn’t go. So that’s the two situations but I want him to continue to be aggressive because you can’t expect to have a lion in the car and a puppy outside, that’s their character.
“He will be upset and you need to accommodate that and respect that. So the question is only how do you do this going forward? What are the rules?”