“We have thick enough skin”– Mercedes are tolerant enough to tolerate outrageous slanders of seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton

“We have thick enough skin”– Mercedes boss Toto Wolff claims his team understands the position of Lewis Hamilton when he sends angry messages.

Lewis Hamilton was infuriated with his team’s decision to force him to pit in the 49th lap of the race. But the team argued that it was necessary for him not to lose any more positions after Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez.

But the Briton insisted on the radio that he would have completed the race without a pitstop, and him losing against Leclerc and Perez after the pitstop compelled him to throw a fit at his team.

📻 “We shouldn’t have come in man”

With laps running out and running P5, Lewis Hamilton wonders about the wisdom of pitting for a new set of inters #TurkishGP 🇹🇷 #F1 pic.twitter.com/60FezdEXw7

— Formula 1 (@F1) October 10, 2021

Not entertaining the boiled rant by Hamilton, Toto Wolff claims that his team has a thick skin to tolerate such situations. Meanwhile, he understood that Hamilton was in a high-pressure situation, and almost a decade old relation helps the team stay together even after such things.

“No problem at all with tough conversations on the radio. Obviously we wouldn’t speak like this to Lewis, because he’s driving a car at 320 km/h,” Wolff said.

“But that’s all OK, absolutely. We are totally aligned, we’ve been in this together eight years. We have thick enough skin to understand that a driver in the car is frustrated about the situation, that he will understand afterwards.”

We need to work on the trust

In the last race in Russia also Hamilton avoided the team call and decided to remain out until he was repeatedly told to pit, and he complied. Later, he called it a “masterstroke”.

Therefore Wolff claims that work has to be done to build more trust between the two parties. And making Hamilton realise that the entire team is working for one objective at the end of the day.

“I think we just need to work on the communication to trust each other, and in a way be able to describe what we are aiming for,” Wolff added.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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