Toto Wolff has explained the circumstances in which Mercedes would impose team orders on George Russell and Kimi Antonelli after their Canadian GP duels.
In both the Sprint and grand prix in Montreal, both Russell and Antonelli nearly came to blows multiple times, as they battled for the lead, with Antonelli the aggressor as Russell defended.
In the Sprint, Antonelli cut across the Turn 1 and Turn 8 grass on the same lap, allowing Lando Norris through for second, whilst in the grand prix, the Italian narrowly avoided ramming into Russell at the final chicane after locking his brakes as they went wheel-to-wheel.
Talks were held with Wolff and both drivers following the Sprint, and with only cursory radio messages in the grand prix, the team did not intervene to call off the fight, which ended on Lap 30 when Russell broke down with a power unit failure, handing Antonelli an easy 38-lap coast to the flag for his fourth successive win.
He now leads the championship by 43 points from Russell after becoming the first driver in F1 history to record his first four grand prix wins in four consecutive grands prix.
Reflecting on the battles, Wolff explained how the team would not impose team orders unless the security of Mercedes’ result was compromised.
“It is always easy at the end to say: ‘Well that was great for the team and for the sport, and didn’t we all enjoy the battling?’, and that is true to a degree, but there is another side, which we need to look at, that it was close a few times and with Kimi tucking back in and locking the tyres, it could have ended in a double DNF,” Wolff reflected to media, including ApexF1.
“Not because of over-aggressive driving, simply because of a mistake, and so it is important to analyse and discuss with the drivers whether they thought it was a bit close, and if that is the case, how we avoid these very tough situations, or situations we deem a bit too close.
“It is easy to accept them fighting to a certain degree, but it is not always going to be the case that we were half a second faster than everybody behind, so we had the gap, had the margin.
“So as much as we look like sportsmen today, allowing it, there could be a situation, where we would maybe turn it down a notch.
“As a team, as uncomfortable as the ride is sometimes, you have to accept that this is the fight that they’ve trained for, but equally if there was a situation where we believe that the team’s points are at risk of being lost, or there was a situation where we were losing so much time to our competitors behind, then we would not be a millimetre hesistant of putting the handbrake on.”
