Wolff Backs Radio Penalties After Antonelli Complains About Russell

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has explained why he told his driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli to stop “moaning” over a collision with his team-mate during the Montreal sprint race.

Antonelli made his frustration clear after contact with George Russell at turn one when he attempted to pass for the lead.

“That was very naughty,” Antonelli told his race engineer Peter Bonnington immediately after the incident.

As Antonelli prepared to challenge Russell again approaching turn eight, Bonnington replied: “Yeah, copy that Kimi. Both are being advised to drive it clean.”

Despite that message, Antonelli over-committed on the inside and ran off track, which dropped him to third place.

“That should be a penalty, I was alongside the mirror,” Antonelli said shortly afterwards. Bonnington responded: “Let’s just keep it cool.”

Bonnington added a further instruction: “Let’s just get this back under control, Kimi. Focus on Norris, focus on the driving.” Antonelli again protested on the radio: “Yeah it’s not fair, he pushed me off.”

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Wolff heard the exchanges and stepped in. “Kimi, concentrate on the driving, please, and not on the radio moaning,” he told his driver.

After the race Antonelli renewed his criticism of Russell, prompting another direct rebuke from Wolff. “If we need to race like this, then good to know,” Antonelli said.

Wolff replied: “Kimi, now is the fourth time to talk about this. We talk about it internally and not on the radio, okay?”

Explaining his interventions to the official Formula 1 channel, Wolff said he wanted to prevent a public dispute from escalating. “All of the media wants to come out now with ‘Star Wars’, and that’s going to be the headlines everywhere,” he said. “So having the message once is okay, a second time I can kind of get, but if you come a third and a fourth time, that’s not good to have that out there.”

Wolff also stressed the learning opportunity presented by close intra-team racing and said he will speak with both drivers about how to handle similar situations in future.

“First of all, I enjoyed also to watch it, we want to see racing and overtaking. For me these moments are super-good because there is so much we can learn from this. I’ll take the drivers aside and say how do you see that, how do we want to handle it in the future? Are we racing each other like it’s a third car, another team mate, fair, that is the rule now, or are we racing with each other differently? Would you give your team mate the space if it was another car, if you’re fighting the championship, or not? And I think it’s up to them also to come up with the rules going forward.”

Penalty box

Antonelli maintained he was sufficiently alongside Russell on the outside to deserve racing room.

F1’s driving standards state that, to be entitled to space when overtaking on the outside, the attacking car must “have its front axle ahead of the front axle of the other car at the apex”, be driven “in a controlled manner from entry, to apex, and to exit” and be “able to make the corner within track limits.”

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