26/04/2022
NEWS STORY
Declaring the W13 "undriveable", Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff vows to protect Lewis Hamilton in the wake of Imola nightmare.
It is ironic that the word schadenfreude is German, for many are clearly getting a big kick out of the German team's struggles this season, and those of its world championship winning driver, Lewis Hamilton.
While it was to be expected that former teammate Nico Rosberg would find it hard to contain his delight, even the Sky pundits, who only a few months ago were singing his praises, appear to be making the most of Hamilton's slide down the order.
In the aftermath of a disastrous Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, as Hamilton wrote-off any hopes of challenging for the title, team boss, Toto Wolff leapt to his defence, vowing to protect the driver with whom the team has won countless titles.
"You know, I have to protect him," said Wolff according to Motorsport Week. "It's not his low. It's the low of the car performance.
"We know that he is a seven-time world champion," he continued, "he caught up last year and nearly fought for the championship while it was lost Saturday of Brazil. The guy is the best driver in the world and he is not having a machine and equipment underneath him to be able to execute.
"It is even irrelevant whether you come 8th, 12th, 15th, doesn't matter," he added, "it's all bad.
"But the real stars, they have recovered... there is none out of the really great ones that come into my mind that didn't have certain moments in their careers that things didn't run properly.
"That is the case now with him since a long time," said the Austrian, "he's going to help the team to sort themselves out and we are sticking together through good and bad times and today certainly was a very bad day.
"The car was undriveable in the way it was undriveable," he said of the porpoising that continues to compromise the W13's performance. "You see the bouncing on the main straight, I wonder how the two of them can even keep the car on the track at times.
"Lewis deserves better from us," he admitted. "The guy is the best driver in the world and he is just not having the machine and the equipment underneath him to be able to execute.
"But we are a team so we all need to do the utmost in order to provide him with a machine that is able to fight for front positions."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Imola, here.