Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes aiming to suppress feud in Bahrain

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says the team had to immediately deal with the fallout from the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday night to prevent any lingering issues resurfacing in Bahrain.

Nico Rosberg was unhappy with Lewis Hamilton’s race management in China, accusing his team-mate of deliberately backing him up to leave him under threat from Sebastian Vettel. While Hamilton was left perplexed by Rosberg’s outburst, Wolff said the team had “a good debrief” on Sunday night.

Looking ahead to this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix just a few days after event in Shanghai, Wolff admits Mercedes had to act quickly to try and prevent the issue from impacting on the next race.

“We saw tensions between Nico and Lewis in the race [in China] and we tackled them directly on Sunday night to stop anything carrying over to this weekend,” Wolff said. “When you have intense competition, it's normal that it causes emotions to run high - and that's not something we want to change.

“But both drivers are now very focused on delivering maximum performance in Bahrain and our package should cope well with the demands of the circuit. We maintain our philosophy of letting the drivers race - but they both know that the number one priority for the team is to win for Mercedes-Benz.”

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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.