© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff touts his team’s “brutal honesty and transparency” and says “no one in the team” takes Lewis Hamilton’s public criticism “the hard way”.
After Lewis Hamilton qualified in P7 at the Monaco Grand Prix, he was somewhat critical of his team in his post qualifying statements.
The Briton said “there will be some tough discussions” with his engineers and added he would be critical of the team “behind closed doors”.
Well, the ‘tough discussions’ have already happened according to Toto Wolff.
“We just had a very productive and tough debriefing and this is exactly the days when we learn the most,” the Austrian said.
“This team has a brutal honesty and transparency within itself and we didn’t get things right.
“It’s not completely clear yet how all the tuning possibilities were interacting with each other, but I would say we were not having enough grip in each of those runs and probably linked to tyre temperature.
“Again, we need to analyse that, but one thing is for sure, we were not competitive. We did not provide Lewis with the right car to build up the confidence and based on a good gripping car that he would like to have.”
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Wolff went on to dismiss that there were any ill feelings toward Lewis for airing his feelings in public.
“We want the drivers to speak their mind and there was a lot of frustration,” explained the Austrian.
“When you are finishing qualifying in P7 in Monaco you know pretty much that is the end of the weekend.
“Venting your frustration is absolutely OK, and no one in the team takes it the hard way because we express it the other way around too.
“He is the first to acknowledge and apologise when things go wrong, he has done it publicly and privately.
“But as a group that is one of our big assets that made us champions in the past – we can take it on the chin.
“There was one particular aspect of tyre heating we discussed this morning and on Thursday night where we could have taken a different direction and a direction he was interested to pursue but didn’t.
“That was exactly the content of our discussions now – go into an exploration mode when we expect much colder temperatures,” concluded Mercedes’ team boss.
