Wolff admits a 'different reaction was needed' after Silverstone 2021 smash
F1 News
- Corwin Kunst
The dust has definitely now settled on F1's controversial, but equally as exciting 2021 season. Things were often fierce between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. At the British Grand Prix in Silverstone, the built-up tension finally exploded as the two title rivals collided on lap one. Verstappen had to go to hospital after a crash which generated a force of 51G. After the race, Mercedes celebrated as Hamilton won the Grand Prix. On The High-Performance Podcast, Toto Wolff has now admitted that he could have handled the situation differently.
At the time, Max Verstappen's camp thought that it was unacceptable for Mercedes to be celebrating while the Dutchman was in hospital after the copse crash. Lewis Hamilton went on to win the Grand Prix after the incident and celebrated wildly with the home fans who came to watch him.
Wolff on Verstappen and Hamilton's Silverstone crash:
Adrian Newey talked about the incident in an earlier episode of the podcast. He admitted he had been too harsh on Hamilton after the incident. Wolff responded after seeing the footage once again: "Adrian reflects very well. I think his intellect is something that shines. You always have to be able to recalibrate yourself. I read something that I really liked a while ago. Play hard, forgive quickly, and apologise when you're wrong. That's the way I try to live," he began.
The Mercedes team boss continued: "Silverstone, the way he described it, is in a way how today you can see things. These guys have been banging wheels, not only that first lap, but they've been banging wheels all along. I think there was a moment where the two decided not yielding at that corner and it ended up in a situation where it ended up. Thankfully, he wasn't hurt. I said before, I could have reacted in a better way because I heard from one of the Red Bull engineers that he was fine. In that respect, that was, you know, tick the box, Max is fine. We went on to win the race and he didn't score so that was important to bounce back in the championship. I felt the driving at times was not clean," the Austrian continued.
Wolff: 'I should've asked Jos if he was OK'
"In retrospect, I should have just picked up the phone and called Jos and said, is he fine? Now Jos clearly would have told me what he was thinking about in that situation but that's fine. I should have, as a father, called the father of the driver and just asked. And I didn't. We cleared the air on that one. There were many more instances in that particular year that were not to the standards that we all expected from each other. So that's fine." The Mercedes boss concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Toby Nixon
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