Toto Wolff speaks on his radio message to Lewis Hamilton in F1 Austrian GP amid a difficult weekend for the Mercedes team.
It is not often that Mercedes team boss Wolff has to come on the radio to calm his drivers down. It has happened this season a couple of times and F1 Austrian GP saw another time when the Austrian opened his radio to calm Hamilton this time.
The Brit was constantly speaking about track limits and if others are getting penalties or not. The time when Hamilton was noting about McLaren’s Lando Norris going off, Wolff came on the radio twice to calm down and put his focus in the race.
Initially, he said, ‘Lewis, they’re all going to get penalties in front of you. Keep going’, while the second time he said, ‘Lewis the car is bad, we know. Please drive it’. Wolff had to come on the radio as the track limits situation went out of control.
“I wanted to just make sure that we were making the best out of the package and just giving it the best shot that we had,” said Wolff to media. “But only for the best interests of the drivers and the team, and sometimes you have moments where you need to calm things down, but I mean well.
“There were a lot of discussions about track limits and whether they were enforced or not. I felt that I wanted to just make sure that we were doing the best out of the package that didn’t perform and just try to give it the best shot that have. I think we’ve either got to go back to the sausage kerb and need to take consideration that teams and drivers shouldn’t complain if they break their cars, because that’s clear, or you’ve just got to let everybody go where they want,” summed up Wolff.
Hamilton, meanwhile, was low post-race. He was handed another penalty which dropped him behind teammate George Russell in the standings. The Brit admitted to having a bad day where he was getting frustrated with the situation.
“The car had no pace,” said Hamilton to media. “It’s a bruising day, I would say, because we’ve had such a good upward trend and then you have to take such a day. There was no pace and no inkling why yet. We knew that we had really bad rear end here, so we took out a lot of front wing to try and keep that balance so that we could do a long run and go long.
“And we massively overdid it and I was almost full lock around the last two corners. Going into Turn 10 I was just sliding, and I couldn’t do anything about it. So through the stops we then added a lot of wing and the car started to slowly come back to at least getting round and staying on track. I think they need to probably find a new solution for this track.
“Years ago, when we didn’t have the track limit thing the track was much more enjoyable to drive. It’s strange to be driving and to have to almost comment on the car ahead, because that’s what the team wants you to do. But that’s not motorsport and not racing, you know? Lando was going off so much, it was insane. As soon as he passed me, he went off like at least 10 times and so did Perez. Obviously they should just be able to go off and none of us get it,” summed up Hamilton.
Here’s Lando Norris passing Lewis Hamilton: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2023-austrian-grand-prix-norris-sweeps-past-hamilton-to-claim-p4.1770317469753124852.html
Here’s revised Austrian GP results
Here’s how F1 Austrian GP panned out