Wolff sought to 'calm things down' with Hamilton radio intervention

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff was an untypical presence on the team's radio during Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix as he sought to "calm things down" amid Lewis Hamilton's complaints and struggles.

Hamilton and teammate George Russell enjoyed mixed fortunes in qualifying, the pair lining up respectively P5 and P11 on the grid at the Red bull Ring.

Russell eventually caught up with his teammate in the 71-lap race, with Hamilton crossing the checkered flag in seventh place, just ahead of Russell.

However, the seven-time world champion was among a group of eight drivers that was sanctioned after the race for track limit infringements, which dropped him to P8 in the race's final standings while Russell inherited P7.

And track limits had been a familiar tune sung by a Hamilton during the race, with the Briton denouncing over the radio the transgressions of his rivals while simultaneously receiving a time penalty for his own infractions.

When asked by his race engineer Peter Bonnington to steer clear of the track's limits, Hamilton quipped: "I can’t keep it on the track, the car won’t turn!".

Perceiving that his driver was unsettled, Wolff intervened and twice urged Hamilton to focus on the job at hand.

"Lewis, the car is bad, we know. Please drive it," he said on his second intervention.

• Read also: Mercedes at a loss to explain 'bruising day' in Austria

After the race, the Austrian justified his in-race radio rebuke.

"You should hear us talking on the phone and meeting each other. That was nothing," said Wolff as he played down the moment.

"We have had a bad weekend, all of us in the team, and that just makes us stronger.

"It was only for the best interest of the driver and the team. Sometimes there is a certain moment when you need to calm things down but I meant well.

"We had a lot of discussion about track limits and whether they were enforced or not.

"I wanted to make sure we were getting the best out of the package that wasn’t performing, and trying to give it our best shot."

Despite Mercedes' recent upgrades and the team's reasonably good outing in Montreal, Wolff admitted that pace was nowhere to be found last weekend on its W14 black arrow.

"It was a bruising day, we couldn't make the car quick. We saw it from Friday onwards that we were lacking a couple of tenths or a bit more," he added.

"I think the swings are quite interesting. One weekend it's us who are the first challenger [to Red Bull], and then it's Ferrari, and then it's Aston Martin, and this time we were on the back-end of the group.

"I think we were predicting that Montreal would not be ideal and it was surprisingly good, then in Austria we thought that the high-speed [performance] would save our non-performance in the lower speed [corners], but it never did.

"The car was never in the right place. We suffered from all of the conditions, from understeer to oversteer. It was never any good."

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