The hostility between the Mercedes and Purple Bull camps was kicked up one other notch forward of this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix when Mercedes crew principal Toto Wolff referred to his Purple Bull counterpart Christian Horner as a “yapping little terrier.”
Horner attributed the penalty handed out to Max Verstappen on the Qatar Grand Prix as being “extra based mostly on hysterics from George [Russell], who has been fairly hysterical this weekend,” That adopted Verstappen saying he had misplaced all respect for Russell because of the approach he had lobbied for a punishment within the stewards’ room on Saturday night time.
Nevertheless, with Russell addressing the state of affairs for the primary time by claiming Verstappen had threatened to purposely crash into him, Wolff unexpectedly joined his driver throughout a media session in Abu Dhabi and acknowledged his perception that Horner has enabled Verstappen’s habits.
“I feel as a crew principal, it’s essential to be a sparring associate on your drivers,” Wolff mentioned. “And meaning explaining that issues may be extra nuanced. Statements which might be absolute, considering that every little thing is both one hundred pc proper or one hundred pc fallacious, is one thing I simply suppose that you must clarify. Consider extra nuance, relying in your notion and your perspective.
“That you must enable for one thing to be 51-49; that you must enable for it to be 70-30. There may be at all times one other aspect. Possibly whenever you have a look at it that approach, and also you clarify it to your drivers and to your crew, you come to the conclusion that there’s reality on either side. When you don’t do this, you’re falling wanting your function. It’s simply weak.
“On the finish, why does he [Horner] really feel entitled to remark about my driver? How does that come? However even interested by it, I’ve spent 90 seconds to consider it… Yapping little terrier. All the time one thing to say.”
Wolff says he’s not eager on interfering between the 2 drivers as they every criticize one another for his or her conduct in Qatar, however that he wished to deal with Horner’s feedback himself.
“I let you know clearly: There’s a factor between drivers, and that is George and Max, and I don’t wish to become involved in that, but when the opposite crew principal calls George hysteric, that is the place he crosses a line for me. Now, his forte for certain is just not mental psychoanalysis, however that’s fairly a phrase. How dare you touch upon the way of thinking of my driver.”
