(Motorsport-Total.com) – Review: At the Barcelona-Catalonia Grand Prix, the VSC not only favored the eventual race winner Lewis Hamilton but also saved Mercedes from a difficult decision regarding team orders. It was only a matter of time.
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Teams like Ferrari are nibbling away at the previous dominance of the Silver Arrows. Therefore, the team cannot afford for its drivers to jeopardize points or even the Constructors’ Championship against each other.
Publicly, George Russell and Kimi Antonelli acknowledge exactly that. The question that remains open here after the talks between the two drivers and team principal Toto Wolff following Barcelona: Will this understanding hold in the heat of battle?
Mercedes puts victory above all
“Of course, the win is the most important thing for the team,” said Russell ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend. “Which driver wins doesn’t matter. You saw that in Canada when Kimi and I fought hard against each other but still managed to pull away from the rest of the field.”
“The win was not at risk for the team. But in Barcelona, suddenly there was another driver fighting for the win.”
“Sure, Lewis helped [the VSC]. [But even without the VSC]: Kimi and I lost time together, and that would have given Ferrari the chance to win.”
“And that is the moment when we as teammates have to act smartly. It is clear that the team wants to win the race. It doesn’t matter whether I win the race or Kimi.”
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That’s easy to say while sitting in an air-conditioned room at the press conference and outside temperatures are already breaking 30 degrees Celsius. History shows how fragile team spirit can be when fighting for the win or the podium.
The possible necessity to intervene in a fight became clear for the first time in Canada. Antonelli and Russell, both in the top two positions in the championship standings, battled for the win in the sprint race and the Grand Prix.
The team structure was tested at various points here, as could be heard in some stressed radio messages from the team.
After an overtaking maneuver on the previous straight, Antonelli almost hit the rear of Russell’s Mercedes. The duel on Sunday was ultimately ended by a so far undiagnosed battery problem with Russell.
The battery pack is still on a ship in the North Atlantic, as such items cannot be transported by cargo plane.
In hindsight, Mercedes admitted that they were close to instructing the drivers to hold their positions. Only because they still managed to pull away from the rest of the field did they decide against this intervention. Toto Wolff was nevertheless clear about how things might proceed in the future:
“If there should be a situation where we believe the team could lose points,” he said, “or a situation where we lose time to our competition, then we will not hesitate for a moment to pull the handbrake.”
The situation in Barcelona was even more intense for Mercedes. Russell had already fallen behind Hamilton in the driver standings. Accordingly, his attempt to stay ahead of Antonelli before the last pit stops of the Mercedes drivers was very important. Both were still in first and second place then, but after the VSC they were behind Hamilton in second and third.
Here it is worthwhile to look at Mercedes’ statements about the race outcome in Barcelona completely without the bias of some fans. “We wanted to race fairly within the team [without issuing a team order],” said Wolff after the race. “But maybe that cost us the win.”
“We have to discuss that with the drivers. How do we handle it when we are fighting for the win with someone else? Before George’s stop, the two raced hard against each other. And I think we lost four or five or six seconds to Lewis there.”
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“We are leaving time on the track there, and we have to discuss that with the two for the future.”
Hamilton win even without VSC
Russell is right in assuming that Hamilton would have had a chance to win even without the VSC. Between laps 30 and 35, when Antonelli was able to catch up to Russell and activate the overtake mode, Hamilton reduced his gap to the two from 18 seconds to 7.6 seconds.
After the stops of the two Mercedes, Hamilton had a lead of 16.8 seconds over Russell. Before the VSC, the Mercedes driver began to close this gap bit by bit. Under green flag conditions, Hamilton’s stop would have put him in fourth place behind Lando Norris, but due to the neutralization, he was able to keep and defend his lead despite the pit stop.
Presumably, Hamilton would have easily overtaken Norris, perhaps even passed him on the outside in turn three, just like Piastri before his charge on the Mercedes.
Meanwhile, Russell was struggling with high tire wear on the rear axle because Mercedes had not properly adjusted his front wing during the last stop. Consequently, it would most likely have come to a “George, this is Toto” radio message.
Such an intervention is not about favoring one driver, although it would undoubtedly be perceived that way in the cesspool of online discussions.
It is about achieving the maximum points for the team and ensuring that a Mercedes driver wins the race, not neither of them. The battery failure with Antonelli saved Mercedes from another intervention, as second and third place dissolved in a cloud of carbon fiber and gravel.
It is known that the tenor in the conversations between Wolff and the drivers is that team orders are always a problematic concept. Especially when a competitor is running a different strategy, everything becomes even more diluted.
Team orders in the heat of battle?
Before the Austrian Grand Prix, Autosport asked Antonelli how challenging it would be for him to control his emotions if necessary. “That certainly wouldn’t be easy for me,” he said.
“In a race, emotions are naturally boiling, and you only think about giving your best and trying to win the race.”
“Of course, from now on we have to race smarter against each other because it’s no longer just about me and George – the others are getting closer.”
“I think this weekend we will see the four best teams very close together because Ferrari has a new, somewhat stronger engine. Red Bull is bringing a big, big upgrade, which should give them more performance. And McLaren has been up front since Miami.”
“I think the way I will race might change a bit. That also depends heavily on the specific scenario. If other drivers, other competitors come very close to us, then I will probably race differently than if it’s just me and George racing against each other.”
“It depends on the pace, how fast we are, and where we are on the starting grid.”
To freely quote a line from the movie Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze: He will be nice – as long as he is supposed to be nice.
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