Rosberg: Wolff/Hamilton tense exchange sign of 'stress' at Mercedes

Nico Rosberg weighed in on the clearly tense exchange that took place in Q2 on Friday at Imola between Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton.

Hamilton had exited his car after his elimination from Q2 and had walked over to Wolff's post inside the Mercedes garage. The furtive scene captured by a TV camera showed a visibly upset Wolff addressing his driver.

Hamilton and teammate George Russell's failure to make the top-ten shootout was the first since Japan in 2012 that Mercedes failed to put a driver in Q3.

Commentating the scene inside the Mercedes garage for Sky F1, Rosberg speculated on the content of the brief but animated conversation.

"It’s very difficult to know what was said," Rosberg commented. "If I had to speculate now, it looked to me like Toto was annoyed about something that Lewis had done, which might be understandable.

"Lewis could’ve been frustrated on the external Mercedes garage radio, that they didn’t follow his thoughts on what they should’ve done with strategy, complaining about the car or something.

"Lewis also got out of the car before Q2 over. There might be still a one per cent chance that the track is still in a good shape towards the end of qualifying, maybe Toto was angry about that."

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Regardless of what was said, Rosberg's takeaway from the scene was that feelings of frustration and stress have set in at Mercedes following the Brackley squad's inability to improve the performance of its 2022 car.

"It just shows that the stress is starting to get there," added the 2016 F1 world champion. "Rather than going forward at the moment, they’re actually going backwards, almost two seconds a lap slower yesterday in qualifying.

"It was their worse qualifying in 10 years, so naturally the tension is going to build internally."

Questioned about the moment on Saturday at Imola by Sky F1's Ted Kravitz, Wolff ensured that there had been no argument between himself and Hamilton.

"There was no disagreement at all," he said. "We were just so angry about the session overall.

"He vented to me and I vented to him. It was absolutely about the same thing."

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