Mercedes decided to preserve, upon the arrival of the Dutch GP last Sunday (23), Kimi Antonelli’s position in the championship relative to George Russell. For Toto Wolff, head of the Formula 1 team, the position swap between the two drivers in Zandvoort was a predictable measure within the team’s strategy and could have occurred in the opposite direction if Russell had been in Antonelli’s situation.
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The intervention happened in the final laps. Antonelli entered the pits during the VSC (Virtual Safety Car), caused by Esteban Ocon’s damaged car, and ended up returning to the track behind Russell. As a result, the two occupied second and third positions, respectively.
Without Mercedes’ order, Russell would have finished ahead and reduced the gap to his teammate to 53 points. The Brit, however, received the instruction to give back second place to Antonelli, a position the Italian already held before the stop. Subsequently, Russell managed to hold off Lewis Hamilton’s approach and finished third. Thus, the Italian’s advantage over Russell remained at 59 points, exactly the same as before the weekend.
Wolff stated that Mercedes already works with this type of situation in their strategic meetings. According to him, the priority is to prevent the drivers themselves from losing time in internal battles when there are close rivals: “Obviously, team orders are always tough. From a driver’s point of view, you can’t expect a lion inside the car and at the same time an easy surrender, but it’s something we always discuss.”
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“It’s something we always agree on in the Sunday morning strategy meeting: we don’t lose time with each other when there are competitors on our tail. We saw this with the Ferraris earlier in the year, I think in Shanghai. You lose a lot of race time, we risk losing more points, and that’s why we try to be proactive and avoid losing any points.
However, Wolff acknowledged that the situation in Zandvoort was not simple for Mercedes. “And it was a very difficult decision because Kimi was in second, ahead of George, and that is basically the order we re-established after the pit stop. So [it was] completely normal, and we would do the same in reverse as well,” he concluded.
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