© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Toto Wolff’s deputy Bradley Lord says “the worst possible thing that can happen for a race team to see your two cars collide”.
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were involved in an unfortunate collision on Lap 1 of the Qatar Grand Prix, that caused Lewis to DNF and demoted George to the back of the grid.
Afterwards, Mercedes’ communications director and Toto Wolff’s deputy in Qatar, Bradley Lord, gave his comments on the incident and the race itself.
“Worst possible start and the worst possible thing that can happen for a race team to see your two cars collide,” Lord said.
“For sure, on Lap 1 with George at the back and Lewis in the gravel, things didn’t look brilliant at all.
“To turn that around with George in P4 and outscoring Ferrari on an afternoon was not something we could have hoped for once we were one lap into the race.
“What might have been is clear to see. We were right on the pace of the McLarens, probably not within striking distance of Max, but there’s a double podium that could have been today.
If you like SilverArrows.Net, consider supporting us by buying us a coffee!
“Ifs, buts and maybes don’t really count in this sport, so we will take what we have got and be happy with that, but it could have been so much more.”
Lord also revealed that in the pre-race meeting, Mercedes had talked about the possibility of Lewis, on soft tyres, making a better start than George, who was on mediums.
“We discussed it in the morning, it was a scenario that we’d been through. Obviously they had different start tyre performance.
“In the moment, they just ran out of space. George had nowhere to go, Lewis tried to take his line. We saw what happened.
“Unfortunately these things can happen. You can’t programme everyone even with a discussion beforehand.
“But we’ll talk about it afterwards as we do and go through it and learn what we can to hopefully never have it happen again,” the Briton concluded.
