“You don’t try to overtake with the knife between your teeth on lap number two and damage both cars,” said Mercedes’ executive director, Toto Wolff. “I tell you this is absolutely unacceptable. We have two drivers crashing into each other. Absolutely unbelievable. There is one rule: you don’t crash into each other.”
Niki Lauda, the team’s non-executive chairman, was, as ever, equally outspoken. “It is unacceptable that in the second lap Nico hit Lewis, completely unacceptable,” he said. “If these things happen at the end of the race, when they are fighting for the win, then you discuss it but in the second lap to hand the victory to Red Bull? I thought they were clever enough to know that but obviously they aren’t.”
Clever or not, it is Mercedes’ handling of their drivers that is being called into question. They had already held one team meeting with their drivers on Thursday to clear the air and settle matters after Hamilton ignored team orders and did not let Rosberg past at the previous race in Hungary. After which all was declared well within the team.
However Hamilton said on Sunday that it had not gone as expected. “It’s interesting because we had that meeting on Thursday and Nico expressed how angry he was – I was thinking ‘It’s been three weeks and you’ve been lingering?’” he said. “He expressed how angry he was, he literally sat there and said how angry he was to Toto and Paddy [Lowe, technical director] but I thought we should be good after that and then this result. It’s interesting.”
Clearly the talks had not been quite constructive enough. The pair, who have known each other since they were 13 and were friends while racing when younger, have become more combative as the season has progressed, particularly since going wheel-to-wheel at Bahrain in April and it became clear the fight for the title was between them.
Mercedes, who understand the weight of missing out on a highly likely one-two finish, promptly called another meeting immediately after the race – of which Hamilton, at least, is clearly tiring. On the team’s admonishment of Rosberg he said: “It reminds me of being at school … teachers will talk but they don’t do nothing. You just get a detention. They won’t even do that. There’s nothing you can do.”
Wolff did, however, hint at taking action. “Today we’ve seen the limits of the slap on the wrist,” he said. “Maybe the slap on the wrist is not enough. If Lewis has said that it’s going to be a slap on the wrist and that there’s going to be no consequence, then he’s not aware of what consequences we can implement.”