Toto Wolff hopes his Mercedes drivers will learn their lessons after the first flashpoint between the Formula 1 title-chasing pair. George Russell won Saturday’s Sprint race in Montreal but only narrowly ahead of Lando Norris. It should have been much more comfortable as the two Mercedes cars were nearly three seconds clear within just a couple of laps, but the door was opened to Norris when Kimi Antonelli went for the lead.
The teenager attempted an audacious move around the outside at turn one but Russell slammed the door shut, pushing his team-mate off the track in the process. Antonelli called the move “very naughty” and was still raging when he took the chequered flag in third, having lost second to Norris as a result of that skirmish.
To the point team principal Wolff sternly told his young driver: “Kimi, now is the fourth time you’ve talked about this. We talk about this internally, not over the radio, okay?” The pair briefly shook hands after getting out of their cars but championship leader Antonelli was stony-faced as he said of the incident: “I was quite well alongside and I got pushed off. But it is what it is.”
Russell wore a smile as he said: “It was a good battle with Kimi and I’m glad we’re both standing here after the race.” Their boss also enjoyed it, describing the duel as “great cinema” for those watching an engaging first F1 Sprint race on Canadian soil.
But he will be keen to stamp out any dissent, having lost control of Lewis Hamilton‘s intra-team title fight with Nico Rosberg a decade ago. Wolff followed his own advice and refused to say whether he felt Antonelli was right to feel aggrieved. The Austrian added he was glad that this incident happened now and with insignificant consequences, so that both his drivers can learn from it.
He said: “You could see how quickly it goes. You create a gap with two cars and then you start to fight a bit, and you can lose a race. If it goes on longer and it’s a bit unlucky for us, and it’s the Grand Prix, then Norris may well win. You don’t want to lose a race because you crashed into each other. Sometimes it needs a little moment to remind ourselves what our objectives are.
“This is not particularly against one or the other, but there’s a framework that we want to establish and I’d rather have it in a Sprint race, where it’s not a lot of points, than in a main race. We don’t want to start, at race five, to have headlines that this is escalating, because it’s not. It’s the emotion. He’s a young driver and I think George would have probably done the same, so we just need to see how we handle it.”
Speaking afterwards to Sky Sports, Russell again defended his actions and said: ” I just took my normal line into turn two, and that’s all there is to say really. It’s always been discussed [internally]: You race each other hard but far. There’s never ill-intention on my side but, on the same not, I’m not just going to wave somebody by. We’re both fighting for our championship, but it’s always the team first.
“We’ll both talk about it after, for sure. But for me I’ve got the peace of mind that it wasn’t investigated and, if the FIA think it was fine, so do I. We need to have a chat. It’s inevitable when you’ve got cars qualifying one and two most weeks, we’re going to be racing each other. We’re standing here, it finished one-three when it should have been one-two.”