Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff wants his drivers to avoid any clash like that between the Ferrari team mates at the Italian Grand Prix.
Charles Leclerc admitted he should not have forced his team mate Lewis Hamilton off the track on the first lap of the race at Monza.“I can express my opinion now and say this is not on to push your team mate off in turn two,” Wolff told Sky.
However he admitted the Mercedes pair came close to a similar incident at the same corner when Andrea Kimi Antonelli caught George Russell in the final laps of the race. Antonelli ran onto the tyre marbles on the outside of turn two and drifted wide through the same gravel bed Leclerc forced Hamilton into.
“Three or four laps to the end, we had some scary moments between the two of them that we didn’t expect because George had a tyre that was shot and Kimi was a second quicker,” said Wolff.
“Did we expect them to fight like they did? Which could have ended up in a car in a gravel bed. So we could have quickly looked like idiots as well, like the Ferraris looked eventually. So it’s a fine margin.”
Antonelli caught Russell after taking advantage of a Virtual Safety Car period in the second half of the race to switch to a fresh set of tyres. Wolff said the team did not bring Russell in at the same point as he was on a harder compound and did not need a second pit stop.
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“It’s absolutely the right thing we did,” said Wolff. “He was on the hard [tyre]. It was predicted to be a one-stop as the better strategy.
“The medium [tyre] was a compromise. We had to put the medium on Kimi because he started on the hard. There was just no way.
“Obviously there’s some couch warriors that will drop their comments after having watched some other material online that are saying that he was penalised [by the team], it’s complete bullshit.”