Russell's radio message: "The stupidest thing I've done at Mercedes"

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admits a radio message he sent to George Russell during the Austrian Grand Prix was “the stupidest thing I’ve done in 12 years”.

Russell was running a solid third, but under pressure from Carlos Sainz and Oscar Piastri in the closing stages of Sunday’s race when Max Verstappen and Lando Norris collided. It opened up the potential for a win that Russell would go on and secure, but Wolff had jumped on the team radio to say “George, you can win this!”, leading Russell to reply “Just let me drive!” due to the timing.

“I think I know the drivers pretty well and what they need sometimes to encourage them or refocus, because I spend so much time with them,” Wolff said. “I think I know their psychology. But this one is the stupidest thing I’ve done in 12 years at Mercedes.

“I will always be ashamed because I look where I want to send messages to the driver and I don’t do it while braking. Or in high-speed corners. But I didn’t look at the GPS. I just saw these two fighting and we anticipated it, and then we pushed the button with emotion and said “we can win.”

“I could have eliminated him with this message!” Imagine how that would have felt. I’m emotional. I like us to do well and I like to see Lewis and George do well. I was just carried away by this situation, but seriously, embarrassing! »

The reason for Wolff’s excitement was the contact between the top two which came after an increasingly intense fight, with the team principal saying he did not expect an incident when the fight started given the generally good relationship between Verstappen and Norris.

“I think we were trying to be rational and we were on our way to P3 and that’s where the pace of the car was and what George was able to get was a solid result,” he said. -he declares. “That’s what it was.

“Then you obviously see these two up front, giving it their all. We know they are really good friends and it was fun to watch. That’s how I perceived it at that moment.

“Then obviously it got a little more violent and at one point we thought it was possible they were going to collide, and they literally did, both of them with a flat tire. We couldn’t believe it when we saw it.”