Wolff 'curious' to see Turn 1 with title rivals and Max

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Toto Wolff says he is "curious to see how it pans out at Turn 1" between the Mercedes drivers and Max Verstappen in the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Verstappen's driving has been criticised by Wolff since the Mexican Grand Prix, where the Mercedes boss felt the Red Bull driver went too far at the start of the race when fighting Nico Rosberg. Wolff even spoke to Jos Verstappen about his son's driving - a discussion Wolff says has been overplayed - and he admits he is interested to see how the three drivers react at the start of today's race.

"I am curious to see how it pans out at Turn 1," Wolff said. "This thing is really blown out of proportion, I don’t think Lewis [Hamilton] or Nico will expect him to race any differently but before I think they will not change their approach.

"In the same way I wouldn’t want to give - or it wasn't meant as - advice to Max it was just two racing enthusiasts having a private discussion that was being dragged out in public."

And Wolff says he trusts his two drivers to race cleanly until the end of the season despite past incidents of contact between the pair this year.

"They know what our philosophy is in racing and with some minor hiccups in between we’ve done well over four years and they didn’t let the team down. This is an exceptional situation with two races to go and our values and objectives haven’t changed. It is still in their hands to race."

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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.