Wolff looks at Williams' 'dangerous tactics': 'It becomes a different track'

22:29, 25 May

byNorberto Mujica

Mercedes' weekend could not have gone worse. Team boss Toto Wolff had expressed the team's willingness to try something daring during the Monaco Grand Prix after a poor qualifying, but were outplayed by Williams in this aspect. The Austrian reacts to his team's complicated outing in Monte-Carlo.

Having qualified in P14 and P15 with George Russell leading Antonelli, at certain points in the race, both Mercedes found themselves behind the purposely slowing Williams' cars of Alexander Albon and Carlos Sainz.

Wolff denounces the 'back-off' Williams did at Monaco

“Two points. I think the amount of back off was catching him [Russell] and Kimi out. I think Kimi was the one that nearly crashed into one of the Williams on braking. When you think about going five seconds slower or so, then this becomes a totally different track, different braking points,” he said to media like GPblog after the race.

For his other driver, Russell, who wound up penalised due to a decision made 'out of frustration' as Wolff points out, it was a similar case. “[It was] difficult to stop the car, just went straight and I think it was a moment of frustration to do something different. We knew that it was a stop and go, we were hoping it's maybe 10 seconds, but yeah it didn't change anything."

After the race, Russell revealed that Mercedes intended to take on a similar strategy to the one Williams employed. Could it have been possible for Antonelli to help Russell get into the points?

"No, there was no scenario in the race where we would have had a point. I think whatever back off Kimi would have done, we would have always been behind the Williams'."

In the end the highest placed Mercedes driver was Russell in P11, just outside the points. However, with the penalty, the Briton said he finished higher than he ever would have without it, highlighting what was a flaw in the system, but the weekend overall may leave the German team scratching their heads as their current known strengths were nowhere to be seen all weekend long.