04/06/2023
NEWS STORY
Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff plays down clash involving his drivers at the end of Q2, insisting that it was merely a miscommunication.
In a qualifying session which had already witnessed the shock, early elimination of Charles Leclerc and looked likely to see Sergio Perez fail to make the cut, both Mercedes drivers began the final lap that would decide if one of their drivers joined the growing number of 'casualties'.
While Hamilton already appeared to have made it through, teammate George Russell, who had aborted his previous run, was currently outside the top ten and in danger of dropping out.
As Russell sought to get a tow from Carlos Sainz who was running ahead, he cut across and clashed with his own teammate.
Called before the stewards, charged with abnormally changing direction and directly causing impact with Hamilton, Russell said that as he was starting his fast lap he was looking forward and had not checked his mirrors, and his team had not informed him of the approach of Hamilton from behind.
In mitigation, the stewards noted that he was reacting to Sainz in front of him, the Spaniard having just finished his last lap in Q2, and consequently issued a formal warning to the Briton and his team.
"It's all down to miscommunication," insisted Wolff, "because drivers in the same team don't want to crash into each other on their final lap of qualifying.
"It was just an unfortunate situation where George just lodged a lap and Lewis had his last opportunity and didn't think that George was starting another lap. It looks silly, but it wasn't. It was just miscommunication."
Promising that the team would check its communications in order to learn from the incident, Wolff said: "You know, it should never happen. Teammates should never collide, even with another car, you shouldn't collide in qualifying.
"This is a team effort and there is something in our communications that we need to review after that happened to avoid it in the future. But that was not a dramatic situation. The car was just not quick enough. At the end it is a trivial incident that just looked silly."
"We were sent out much different times," said Hamilton of the incident. "I was being given my time when I was on my out-lap, everyone's starting from Turn 12, when I came out of Turn 12 there was no-one ahead so I got on the gas, I started to pick up the pace.
"I came around Turn 13 and George looked like he was going into the pit lane, so I kept it going and all of a sudden he cut back across, which was obviously a bit confusing because I didn't even know he was there. I think he had bailed out of his first lap or something like that.
"So then I was towing him, and just in case he was giving me a tow and then he started to move to the right so I was like 'Oh he is giving me a tow', so went to the left and he started coming back across. So just a misunderstanding."