Kimi Antonelli, Toto Wolff spoils the party? Changes on the way

Andrea Kimi Antonelli and George Russell put on a show on the track with their duel in Montreal in both Saturday’s Sprint race and Sunday’s race. The clear advantage over their rivals allowed the two Mercedes drivers to duel undisturbed, and from the pit box boss Toto Wolff never intervened with team orders, but only with reprimands for some borderline team radio, especially from the driver from Bologna.

This could all change starting from the next Grands Prix: mindful of the duels between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2016, Wolff seems oriented to curb the ardor of the two drivers in the upcoming races. “It is always easy at the end to say ‘well, it ​s ​been great for the team and the sport, and we all enjoyed watching the battle.’ That is true to a certain extent, but there is another aspect that we have to consider, which is that the victory was at risk on several occasions.”

According to Wolff, a double retirement was risked several times: “The fact that Kimi moved to the inside and blocked the tires could have led to a double retirement, not because of too aggressive driving but simply because of a mistake, and the same happened at the last chicane. We have to analyze the risk and then discuss with the drivers if the situation seems to us to be on the limit.”

The team principal of the Silver Arrows therefore did not rule out the use of team orders in the future: “In some situations where we think the situation is critical there could be. In Montreal we had an advantage in terms of pace, we were half a second faster than everyone behind us. But when they were doing battle we were losing a second to everyone else.”

“Today we were very sporting and allowed all that, but there could be situations where maybe we would tone it down a little bit.” On fiery radio teams: “We need to improve, showing your emotions is right, however, you have to focus on driving, that’s important.”