“I Could Have Reacted in a Better Way”: Toto Wolff Shares His Regrets on Max Verstappen’s Silverstone Crash

In 2021, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen treated the F1 world to a title battle unlike anything the sport had ever seen before. Heated on-track battles and verbal exchanges off it, the season had everything. One of the more infamous moments from that campaign involved a crash between Hamilton and Verstappen in Silverstone, something Toto Wolff wishes he could have handled differently.

A coming-together between the two looked imminent heading into the British Grand Prix on Sunday that year. They were banging wheels all along and had come close on several occasions.

Heading into the Copse corner on the very first lap of the race, Hamilton‘s front left tire made contact with Verstappen’s rear right, sending the Dutchman into the barriers at a speed close to 200 mph.

Wolff, on the now-defunct public radio to the FIA race director Michael Masi, immediately pleaded innocence on behalf of his driver. The Mercedes Team Principal admitted to having data ready on his email, to show that it was Hamilton’s corner and that Verstappen was in the wrong. In hindsight, Wolff knows he was wrong.

“I could have reacted in a better way. Because I heard from one of the Red Bull engineers that he [Verstappen] was fine,” Wolff said on the High-Performance podcast.

“And in that respect, that was, tick the box, ‘Max is fine,’ In retrospect, I should have just picked up the phone and called Jos and said ‘Is he fine?'”

One of the Red Bull engineers had told Wolff that Verstappen was fine, which in his head, gave him the complete right to enjoy the Red Bull driver’s zero-point haul and celebrate Hamilton’s ultimate victory wholeheartedly.

Wolff, however, being a father, acknowledged that he should have called Verstappen’s father Jos, because he later got to know how badly the accident shook him up.

Verstappen’s vision problems following Silverstone crash

It was soon revealed that Verstappen had suffered a 51G impact, and it unsurprisingly hurt him because, in the immediate aftermath, he could be heard groaning in pain.

The now 27-year-old was taken to the hospital, where he was kept under observation for several hours. At the time, no one knew but three years later, Verstappen would reveal that he developed temporary vision problems because of the crash — likely a result of a minor concussion.

He had taken part in the next few races after Silverstone with blurry eyesight, but let no one outside of his immediate close group know because he didn’t want to appear as someone making excuses.