03/07/2023
NEWS STORY
Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff has explained why he felt the need to order Lewis Hamilton to concentrate on his driving rather than monitoring the antics of rivals.
Told that he had been given a penalty just 17 laps into the race, the seven-time world champion suggested that it was the car at fault.
"I can't keep it on the track, the car won't turn," he said.
As he subsequently pursued Sergio Perez, he started to give a running commentary on the Mexican's track limits violations, urging his engineer, Pete Bonnington to inform the stewards.
No sooner had Bonnington acknowledged the call then Toto Wolff joined in. "Lewis the car is bad, we know," said the Austrian. "Please drive it."
Asked, post-race, why he felt the need to make the comment to his driver, Wolff said: "Sometimes there is a certain moment where you need to calm things down. But I mean well.
"We had a lot of discussion about track limits and whether they were enforced or not and I just felt I wanted to make sure we were doing the best to get the most out of the package to make it perform and try to give it the best shot that we had.
"It was a bruising day," he admitted. "We couldn't make the car quick. We saw it from Friday practice onwards that we were lacking a couple of tenths and that was the case today.
"The swings are quite interesting, one week it is us who is the first challenger, then it is Ferrari and then it is Aston Martin.
"This time we were on the back end of that group and you are sitting there for 90 minutes trying to optimize the strategy or give the best support to the drivers, but if there is no inherent pace that is a tough 90 minutes for all of us."
Finishing seventh on track, Hamilton's mood will not have been helped by the fact that he was one of eight drivers subsequently handed a post-race penalty for violations that the Red Bull Ring stewards had missed, thereby dropping him to eighth.
Interestingly, while Hamilton had been reporting Perez for his misdemeanours, later in the race it was the Briton's violations that were being monitored by Lando Norris.
"I was doing a live commentary on every single corner pretty much," the McLaren driver told Sky Sports. "And he only got a five-second penalty.
"Maybe I should have commented more," he added. "He did like four strikes in one lap."
"If you go wide you get a penalty but somehow he didn't get a penalty so I am a bit confused," said Norris at the subsequent media debrief. "I was only behind Lewis and I feel for him because in his position he has a car behind, I can't describe what he must be feeling at that point, to him it was the other way around, to stay ahead of a quicker car that has DRS and pushing like this at every single corner.
"You have one little snap, all the wind changes through the corner and you can end up off the track, so the fact you get penalised because of the change of nature in the middle of a corner is a bit of a nasty thing.
"It is very difficult, easy to understand and of course it makes us look a bit silly from the outside but it is also life, it is the rules and we have to stick to it."
Check out our Sunday gallery from the Red Bull Ring here.