“I don’t think we can really assume that it will always end up in an incident”– Toto Wolff on Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen vying from the front row.
Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton’s rivalry got intense after the collision between the two at Silverstone, where they were battling wheel to wheel, and one wrong move caused a massive crash.
Now, before the start of the race, the duo would be locking up against each other from the front row, but Mercedes boss Toto Wolff doesn’t expect things to be in a similar fashion.
“I think the two protagonists will start side-by-side more often this season and I don’t think we can really assume that it will always end up in an incident,” Wolff says.
“They are both amongst the best ones and they know that every win counts – but they will do it fair and square, but hard. And I think, in a way, we need to stop referring to the Silverstone incident because we’re going to do this another five times this year when they’re standing side-by-side.”
We won’t be discussing the turn 1&2 strategy
Mercedes, for this race, has surrounded the lone Red Bull driver Max Verstappen at the front, but Wolff said that they wouldn’t be discussing strategy with both drivers over how to affect Verstappen in this situation, and rather left that decision to their respective engineers.
“No, we won’t be discussing the strategy for turn one or two,” Wolff says. “The drivers are going to discuss with their respective engineers about various possibilities of plays, but we don’t need to refer back to him how to drive or what is at stake, because he knows best.”
“So we are not going to address that,” he added. Verstappen has a better chance of grabbing a win at Zandvoort due to the narrow chances of overtaking.
