Toto Wolff lands ‘idiot’ barb at Ferrari for Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc's Monza clash

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has aimed a dig at Ferrari over the two Formula 1 team’s contrasting approaches to dealing with how their drivers race each other. 

Lewis Hamilton accused Ferrari of having “no rules” after he was forced wide onto the gravel by Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc and dropped six positions at the exit of the first chicane on the opening lap at the Italian Grand Prix. 

A lack of team orders at Ferrari had irked Hamilton at the previous round at Zandvoort, where the seven-time world champion felt the team had thrown away a potential podium finish due to losing time stuck behind Leclerc. 

In the race race, Mercedes swapped its drivers to favour Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who was on a superior strategy to his team-mate George Russell, something that Hamilton highlighted as he criticised Ferrari’s execution. 

Mercedes team principal Wolff took a cheeky swipe at Ferrari’s lack of action at Monza during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend. 

“That's been part of our role in the last 12 years, to manage both sides of the garage well, because if you're in a title fight, one is always going to be disappointed after a race and the other one is going to be happy,” Wolff said of Mercedes’ stance on team orders to Sky Sports F1. 

“I think as long as you're transparent and there is no hidden agenda of favouritism, then it's the best to manage it. But it doesn't mean that we're not making some harsh calls. 

“We're having this stern talk in the Sunday morning, what are the various situations we are facing? Behind some pressure from another team and one of our drivers is behind the other one and it's too slow, we're going to invert the cars when it’s needed. 

“But it's decisions that you need to take sometimes. And in either direction, by the way, whoever's in front. The decisions you need to take in order to win a championship, but it's always going to be balanced.”

Rather than rules of engagement, Mercedes prefers to dub its approach “racing intent”, with Wolff light-heartedly admitting that his drivers “don’t want rules”. 

“I can express my opinion now and say, well, it's not on to push your teammate off in Turn 2,” Wolff added. 

“But three or four laps to the end, we had some scary moments between the two of them that we didn't expect in that way, because George had a tyre that was shot and Kimi was a second quicker. 

“We could have quickly looked like idiots, like the Ferraris looked eventually. So, it's a fine margin.” 

Wolff once again defended Mercedes’ decision to split strategies at Monza, despite Russell ultimately losing out on victory to Antonelli as a direct result.

“It's absolutely the right thing we did,” Wolff insisted. “He [Russell] was on a hard. It was predicted to be a one-stop, as the better strategy. The medium was a compromise. We had to put the medium on on Kimi because he started on the hard. There is just no way. 

“Obviously there's some couch warriors that will drop their comments after having watched some other material online,  that are saying he’s penalised. It’s complete bull****. 

“Ah, I shouldn't say that. It's complete c***. [Laughter] I can't say that, no. It wasn't... Not right. Not right.”