09/07/2022
NEWS STORY
As Lewis Hamilton admits to being "incredibly disappointed" for his mistake, teammate George Russell looks for the positives as both Mercedes drivers crash out of qualifying.
As first one, then the other Mercedes crashed out of qualifying - much to the delight of the partisan crowd - other than whether the incidents were related, the miin talking point was the totally impassive look on Toto Wolff's face.
Over the years we have seen the Austrian lose his cool on more than a few occasions, but as his two drivers headed off into the barriers he sat sporting the very best of poker faces.
In both incidents, the drivers' cars suddenly swapped ends, and in the seven-time champion's case it was time to put his hand up.
"I'm incredibly disappointed in myself," he said. "I'm so sorry to the team, everyone worked so hard to put this car together and I never like to bring it back damaged.
"We were fighting for top three, he added. "I don't have an answer to it, I just lost the back end in Turn 7 and that was that.
"I'm encouraged, of course, to see our performance," he continued. "We weren't expecting to be as close as that today so that's a huge positive. But I'm really quite far back. I don't know what's possible from there but we have a sprint race as well so I hope that tomorrow I can make up for some lost time."
"I could have been P4, for sure," said Russell, "I was a tenth up on my lap and absolutely went for it because I thought there was an opportunity for third.
"As it turns out, probably not," he added. "But we just need to see how much damage is done. I'm sorry to the team and to the guys in the garage.
"I think we ordinarily have better race pace than we do qualifying pace," he continued. "We're definitely there in the fight. As a team, that's probably our best qualifying of the year in terms of pace, but probably the worst in terms of outcome. That's racing.
"There's definitely positive signs," he insisted. "We know that we've brought some things to the car. We know that Ferrari and Red Bull were probably pushing the boundaries with the planks a bit more than the interpretation of the regulation and probably all these things coming together is coming in our favour.
"We're not getting carried away, Lewis was doing a phenomenal job, he was absolutely flying today. I probably went in the wrong direction with my set up for qualifying but may be in a good place for the race. I feel okay, physically, I'm just a bit concerned about the car, if we can recover it."
Insisting that his drivers "shouldn't beat themselves up", Toto Wolff said: "We've given them a car that wasn't on par for ten races in a row. Now we're starting to come to terms and we're able to drive in front and then it can happen that you just lose the car.
"I'd rather have a fast car and a qualifying like this than not having the pace to be in the top four," he admitted, thereby explaining the lack of reaction at the time of the incidents.