Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says that he's still in a state of "disbelief" over the way that Lewis Hamilton was excluded from the results of Friday's qualifying session in Sao Paulo.
The decision by the FIA race stewards that the DRS slot on Hamilton's car had been fractionally wider than allowed by the sport's technical regulations meant that Hamilton had to start today's sprint qualifying race from the back of the grid.
The outcome of the sprint race sets the starting order for tomorrow's Grand Prix. With Hamilton also incurring a five place grid drop for taking a new engine change, it left the reigning world champion at a huge disadvantage.
Mercedes decided not to appeal the stewards decision, but Wolff admitted that he and Hamilton still felt considerable "disbelief how things went" and with the actions of the stewards as he revealed the incredibly slender margins involved in the infringement.
"It’s not an easy ruling on such a contentious topic where it is about a world championship, and they need to look at the specific situation and not at the bigger picture," he told Sky Sports F1. “With a certain respect for the stewards, it’s difficult in that situation."
The issue was initially discovered by FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer in parc ferme after the end of Friday qualifying, but the stewards didn't announce their decision until Saturday afternoon. "I thought that [Mercedes sporting director] Ron Meadows was making a joke when I saw the WhatsApp, so strange things happen," said Wolff.
He felt that rather than imposing a heavy sanction that could very well decide this year's driver and team titles, the stewards could have taken a more constructive approach to what unfolded.
"The process from telling us - discovering we have marginally failed the test, we’re speaking 0.2 of a millimetre - to not allowing this to be fixed like the normal protocol, but rather reported to the stewards. The bullet was out of the gun.
“We believed it was okay, because the wing was damaged, one side was okay, the middle was okay, the right side was not okay, that actually means we had a performance disadvantage.
"We thought in consideration of all these aspects the FIA would say there was damage and therefore we weren’t in breach of regulations," he explained. “The wings are all the same specifications, hadn’t been changed for a long time.
“We failed successive consecutive tests by the tiniest of margins. In the past that would have meant ‘fix it’,” he pointed out. "We’ve seen it with the Red Bull rear wing last weekend, we have had many bargeboards, things, failures that were being put back because the FIA has our cut drawings, they had the wings.
"We wanted to leave the wing with them so they could cut it in a thousand pieces," he continued. "The bad wing and Valtteri’s wing passed all the tests before. Nothing was changed. It failed yesterday on one side because it has simply deteriorated or was damaged during the qualifying session."
The stewards agreed that there had been no intention to break the rules by Mercedes, but still felt obligated to exclude Hamilton from Friday's results.
“If the stewards decide, you have to take it on the chin and it goes both ways,” he said. "They said there was nothing that happened with intent from our side and we were disqualified, which honestly I couldn’t believe.
Hamilton's exclusion promoted Verstappen to P1 for the sprint race, but Valtteri Bottas took the lead at the start and will start tomorrow's Grand Prix from pole.
Hamilton himself made up 15 places during the 24-lap race, but will start tomorrow from tenth as a result of his separate grid penalty. It still leaves the team with all to play for.
"That last 60 minutes of motor racing from Valtteri and Lewis brought all the enjoyment back with all the frustrations that happened before," said Wolff. "You just have to take it on a chin."
After the sprint Wolff himself came on the team radio to congratulation Hamilton and to make a dig at the stewards: "Lewis, brilliant job. Damage limitation. **** them all."
Wolff rolled back on that later: "I obviously didn’t mean it towards any of the regulations,” he said. "It’s a general mindset that we have that sometimes when there is hardship, you need to build up resilience - and that's what was meant by saying '**** them all'
"The point is that yesterday the car was being tested, and today two hours before the race we got the information that we were disqualified, and that is – how can I say – in a way, sad."
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