Wolff sent mail with non-existing FIA diagram after clash at Silverstone
F1 News
- GPblog.com
After the incident between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton during the GP of Great Britain, Toto Wolff contacted race director Michael Masi to ask if he had read his email. This was not the case, so Wolff went to explain it personally to the stewards. What exactly was in the email?
Mercedes sent diagrams to the race committee, which showed that a corner belongs to the attacking party if he is next to the driver in front by half a car length. With this Mercedes wanted to prove that the corner belonged to Hamilton and therefore he was not guilty for the crash of Verstappen.
Motorsport-Total.com has investigated the mail and it appears that the diagrams are not part of an official FIA document, while Mercedes suggested that they were. The World Automobile Association stated that the diagram "has never been an official FIA document" and that it has never been published as such, it says on its website.
Wolff used an informal document
It turns out that the publication is from years back, when Hamilton and Nico Rosberg had a fierce duel. Based on that, Mercedes wanted to set guidelines on how drivers should race each other. Mercedes would have used the same document at Silverstone as evidence against Verstappen, but it was informal. It seems that there was a miscommunication. Mercedes assumed that it was an official document.
For Masi the diagrams of Wolff were a mystery because they were never part of the F1-rules of the FIA. In the end Hamilton received a penalty of ten seconds.