Will Wolff get his drivers in line? 'They have no control over them now'

Formula 1 analyst Peter Windsor watched with amazement as Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell clashed at the first corner of the Qatar Grand Prix. The 71-year-old Briton thought Hamilton's action was far too eager and stressed that while he might have done the same to his former team-mate Valtteri Bottas, Russell would not let himself be pushed aside.

Windsor analyses crash Hamilton and Russell

In the analysis on his YouTube channel, Windsor says the incident between the Mercedes drivers was reminiscent of the one between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in Barcelona 2016. "This was not George's fault, which I suppose is my way of saying it's Lewis's fault. I think it was Lewis's fault," the analyst began.

Hamilton started on soft tyres, Russell on mediums. "As we saw in the sprint race, there was a huge advantage off the line to be on soft tyre. Lewis knew that he was probably only going to have a grip advantage for probably four to five laps, which is why on the formation lap, he was saying, I'm just going to get eaten alive by these guys," he explained.

Windsor therefore thinks Hamilton was keen to get away well at the start and take all his advantage from a strong start on the softs. In addition, he thinks Mercedes wanted to split the strategies to take advantage in case of a safety car. In that case, according to Windsor, Hamilton could have possibly even taken the lead in the first stint, but things turned out differently.

Windsor: 'Choice of Russell has everything to do with this'

"This comes back right back to the choice of George Russell as the other driver in the Mercedes, because in this situation, when you've got Lewis Hamilton, who's never going to be anything other than the seven times world champion, who wants to win a Grand Prix if the car is capable of letting him win it," Windsor continued. "If you've got Lewis in that car, you definitely need to have somebody like a Valtteri Bottas or a Sergio Perez in the other car, if you're going to have them next to one another on the grid."

Hamilton tried to get past Russell on the outside at the first corner, but the latter did not let himself just pull over for fear of hitting his teammate. "Now you could have said that to a Valtteri, you could have said that to a Sergio Perez, you could say that to a Carlos Sainz, probably, if he was in a Mercedes and Lewis was the other driver," says the analyst.

"But you can't say it to a George Russell. George Russell's too much of a racer. He's a proven winner already. There is absolutely no way in the world that George Russell would have accepted that, and that's why presumably they never said anything to him, because after the incident, after they touched, and by the time George was back in the race from his pit stop, new tyres on the car, making up ground, a race ahead, maximum he was ever going to do was finish fourth."

Now the Mercedes drivers were still making up for it, but in another situation, Windsor says this will certainly not be the case. "Just imagine if Mercedes were in the running for the world championship in any given situation, in any given year, imagine what it'd be like between Lewis and George Russell."

Windsor fears Toto Wolff will struggle to keep his drivers in line in the future. "The management have absolutely no control over them now, and there is nothing they could do about it because there is no way you can ever say to George Russell, Lewis may well try to pass you on the outside, let him go. It's never going to happen. It's not a conversation that George would even begin to listen to. And that of course is what Mercedes never considered, I guess, when they hired George rather than keeping Valtteri Bottas."