Vasseur shoots Wolff down: 'We have enough rules like this'

21:57, 25 May

byNorberto Mujica

Toto Wolff, following a very tough Monaco Grand Prix, suggested the creation of rules to stop drivers from bunching up the field. His Ferrari counterpart, Frederic Vasseur dismissed it, and he explains why.

For the Monaco Grand Prix the FIA implemented a two mandatory pitstops rule. Teams like Racing Bulls and Williams opted to first use their driver lowest in the order to bunch up the pack, to allow their leading driver to oull out a gap and earn a free pitstop. Then the roles were reversed.

Speaking to media including GPblog Vasseur foresaw that same strategy as well. "With two stops you can imagine a strategy where if you have a team with two cars in the same region, to let one car go, to do a delta of 20-25 seconds, he pits, then you swap, you do the same."

"And to play this kind of game, that you need to have two guys [who are] disciplined, but it's possible."

Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson for Racing Bulls, and Alexander Albon and Carlos Sainz for Williams played this strategy to perfection, yielding the forecasted rewards for both teams, much to Mercedes' displeasure since George Russell was left on the confines of the points scoring positions.

George Russell overtook Alexander Albon off track at the Monaco Grand Prix, as the Thai was holding him up susbtantially

Vasseur shoots down Wolff's suggestion

Creating rules to prevent people from bunching up the field, is not the way to go, at least for Vasseur, since it's been a long standing strategic game in F1.

"To police it, honestly it's impossible because it's not the first time. I remember that last year we played a game also that we tried to manage the gap between the two cars."

"And in the past McLaren did it two or three years ago. You can always do something like this on track and if you want to start to police it, what is the limit? Is it 3 tenths? One second, two seconds, three seconds? But we have enough rules like this."