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Toto Wolff has called on Mercedes to ‘raise its game’ after the latest miscommunication error undermined Lewis Hamilton and George Russell during the Belgian sprint shootout.
Hamilton and Russell both bemoaned the lack of clarity from Mercedes after they were left languishing in seventh and 10th on the grid for the sprint race at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, particularly as the seven-time F1 champion was on provisional pole after the first run in SQ3.
On the crucial second run, Hamilton started the lap directly behind Russell, leading to them almost colliding on the Kemmel Straight after the younger Briton had made a small error out of La Source, and then refused to yield to allow by his team-mate.
After the session, Hamilton said: “I reckon I could have been first or second on that last lap. Communication was pretty poor. It was difficult to understand.
“We got to the last corner, and it was seven cars trundling around. We were led to believe we didn’t have any time left which is why we were pushing. But we had plenty of time.”
Russell described the session as “a total mess from start to finish”. He added: “Surprised we got to Q3 because there were so many mistakes on my side, and a bit of miscommunication at the end.
“We were stressing about the clock finishing, and I think we had more time on the clock than we expected. I was too close to the car up front and Lewis was too close to me. Bad, bad session”
Team principal Wolff recognises improvements have to be made, particularly after an earlier communication breakdown during qualifying for the Spanish GP that resulted in a collision between the duo.
“Between the drivers, both of them, the interaction with the team, we just need to ramp up our game,” insisted Wolff.
“In tough conditions, we have got to have some precision. Very quickly, you can look very good, very intelligent, or very bad.
“To give you an example, if these two don’t tangle in the way they did, Max (Verstappen) would have missed the final lap.
“Having said that, that’s not the driver we should be focused on, but ourselves. We had the time to give them both a proper launch.
“Lewis was on provisional pole the lap before and then ended up P7. It’s clearly a problem for all of us. That shouldn’t be happening.
“It’s not that he’s missed out on pole or the front row, the team has missed out on it.
“All of us together, it’s really a constant development and learning process, and I think with the badness of what happened, I’m sure, in discussing it afterward, we’ve made a step in correcting that.
“We’ve tripped up a few times now, and we just need to up our game.”
In the sprint, Hamilton crossed the line fourth but was demoted to seventh on the back of a five-second penalty for causing a collision with Red Bull’s Sergio Perez.
Hamilton’s attempted overtake on the inside of Perez resulted in a collision and a sizeable hole in the sidepod of the Mexican’s RB19 that forced him into retirement.
In their findings, the stewards noted that “while Perez was giving little room on the inside for Hamilton, Hamilton drove onto the kerb and subsequently understeered into Perez in the wet conditions”.
Wolff was far from impressed, insisting that what unfolded was “an absolute racing incident”.
He added: “This is a sprint race, we want to see them racing. The argument of the damage isn’t valid because he (Perez) was going backward before then – massively backward.
“When you look at that corner, they were side by side, and yeah, fair enough, it takes two to tango but it’s a racing incident. For me, that’s pretty clear.”
In his defence, Hamilton drew on a line from hero Ayrton Senna.
“As Ayrton said, if you no longer go for a gap that exists, then you are no longer a racing driver,” he said. “That is what I did, and when I watched it back, it feels like a racing incident to me.
“The conditions were tricky out there. We are doing our best and it wasn’t intentional. He was slow and I went up the inside and I was more than half-a-car length alongside.
“I feel like we shouldn’t be deterred from racing. It would have been nice to finish fourth but I don’t really care about finishing fourth, I want to win.”
