Antonelli warned by Wolff over radio messages after Russell incident

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff warned Kimi Antonelli to keep his frustrations off team radio after the Italian complained about George Russell’s driving during the Sprint at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Russell pushed Antonelli wide at Turn 1 as the championship leader attacked his teammate at the start of lap 6 of the Sprint, resulting in Antonelli bouncing across the grass (pictured above). The stewards took no action for the incident, and Antonelli then made a mistake attacking again later in the lap, dropping to third behind Lando Norris.

After the two off-track moments, Antonelli took to team radio to say Russell’s initial move had been “very naughty”, and that he should be penalized for not leaving him space at Turn 1, but after race engineer Peter Bonnington tried to calm down the Italian, Mercedes team principal Wolff then intervened.

“Kimi, concentrate on the driving please, and not on the radio moaning,” Wolff said.

When Antonelli crossed the line in third place, he then radioed the team to say: “If we need to race like this it’s good to know.”

Wolff then replied: “Kimi, now is the first time [we need] to talk about this, we talk about this internally and not on the radio.”

Speaking to F1 TV after the Sprint, Wolff said he didn’t mind the frustration in the moment but felt the repetitive complaints are when he needed to step in.

“First of all, I also enjoyed watching it,” Wolff said. “We want to see racing and overtaking. And for me, these moments are super good because there is so much we can learn from this and take the drivers aside and say: 'How do you see that? How do we want to handle it in the future?'

“Are we racing each other like it's a third car? Another team? That’s fair, that is the rule now. Or are we racing each other differently? Would you give your teammate the space if it was another car if you're fighting the championship or not? And I think it's up to them also to come up with the rules going forward.

“Drivers have emotions. Obviously, you're so upset about being pushed off or not having left the space. But all of the media wants to come up now with ‘Star Wars’ and that's going to be the headlines everywhere. So having the message [from Kimi] once is OK. A second time, I can kind of get. But if you come a third and a fourth time, that's not good to have that out there.”