Toto Wolff declares Mercedes "dangerous" for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell

Wolff, Mercedes, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2022 — Photo: © LAT Images

Canadian Grand Prix

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Toto Wolff declares Mercedes "dangerous" for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell

"You're driving around with a car that's dangerous, that doesn't go fast"

Graham Shaw Consultant Editor

Digital sports specialist running global brands for 30 years

Saturday 18 June 2022 22:01

Toto Wolff has conceded that Lewis Hamilton and George Russell are driving a Mercedes which is "dangerous" as the team desperately tries to get to grips with issues around porpoising and bouncing.

Wolff's admission, ahead of qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, came on the back of a Saturday morning meeting of team principals which was reportedly extremely feisty.

Wolff stated that while all the talk might have been about politics and performance gains, all he cares about is the health of the drivers which he feels is currently at risk.

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"Sometimes you're getting upset," he told Sky Sports F1. "I believe that what we've seen in Baku and also here is literally every single driver from every team, including the front runners, suffering from the bouncing or the bottoming.

"[Sergio] Perez was saying he had blurred vision.

"It's all fair that we're having political fights about performance gains, but some of them are taking it too lightly when you look at drivers' health.

"I think in Baku it was definitely too dangerous to run these cars, every single one suffered.

"You could see that the bottoming on the straight was quite dangerous. We've seen it yesterday here too."

Mercedes not doing its job on "s***box" car

Wolff described the 2022 Mercedes as "a s***box" when apologising to Hamilton for its performance after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Re-iterating the car is the issue and not his drivers, he added: "I think we probably got it wrong in terms of what we expected regarding mechanical grip and downforce. Our car is just too low for what you can realistically run.

"I think I am speaking just what we all think. Everyone in the team knows we haven't done collectively a good enough job.

"I try to just support the driver, because you're driving around with a car that's dangerous, that doesn't go fast.

"I just wanted to make sure that we know it's not the driver's ability. It's the car. We are not doing our job at the moment, he is."