Wolff 'fed up' of Hamilton and Rosberg contact

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Toto Wolff has declared himself "fed up" of having to analyse contact between Mercedes team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

After taking each other out at the start of the Spanish Grand Prix, the two drivers made slight contact at the start of the Canadian Grand Prix, which resulted in Wolff saying such incidents felt like "deja vu". In Austria, the pair collided again as Hamilton attempted to pass on the outside of Turn 2 on the final lap and Rosberg tried to run his team-mate wide, resulting in contact.

Rosberg was penalised with a ten-second time penalty after the race but Wolff believes both drivers need to avoid hitting each other.

"I don’t want to attribute any particular blame to each of them," Wolff said. "There’s the heat of the moment – it’s either the first lap or the last lap – and you know what? I am fed up with trying to analyse it. I just don’t want any contact any more."

And Wolff reiterated his threat to impose team orders in future to try and prevent further collisions.

“I think our drivers are among the two best in Formula 1. We try to build the best possible car, we try to push the limits, and it’s not always easy because we have moments where the car has been letting us down.

“I don’t want to attribute any blame because every time you watch the video and you look at onboards there is new information. You can’t clearly say who is more to blame than the other. I have a personal opinion, and I’m not going to express it here. As a matter of fact that needs to be avoided.

“In Barcelona I was much easier with it because we had 30 races without any collision, it was clear it was eventually going to happen, it wiped out both cars.

“From my naïve thinking I said to myself ‘Okay, that’s it, they’ve learned their lesson, they’ve seen the consequences and it’s not going to happen any more’. But here we go, it happens again.

“So the only consequence is to look at all the options available on the table, and one option is to freeze the order of a certain stage in the race. It’s unpopular, makes me puke myself because I like to see them race, but if the racing is not possible without contact, then that’s the consequence.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.