Severe consequences in store for Rosberg

Mercedes boss displeased with driver’s collision with teammate.

SPA: Nico Rosberg will face serious consequences, but his comments were misinterpreted and he did not deliberately crash into Lewis Hamilton in the Belgian Grand Prix, according to Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.

Speaking after a heated meeting to review Sunday’s stormy race won by Australian Daniel Ricciardo, Wolff explained that Rosberg, who was booed on the podium, had wanted to make a point by not giving way when the pair collided on lap two.



But that, he said, did not mean he had intended to crash with Hamilton puncturing the Briton’s left rear tyre and wrecking his race.

Hamilton retired pointless with four laps remaining after battling at the back of the field and later said Rosberg had told him he had hit him deliberately.

“It looked quite clear to me, but we just had a meeting about it and he basically said he did it on purpose,” said Hamilton. “He said he could have avoided it. He said ‘I did it to prove a point’.”

Rosberg, with a broken front wing, survived and finished second to open up a 29-points lead over Hamilton in the title race with seven races remaining.

“Today we’ve seen the limits of the slap on the wrist,” said Wolff. “The slap on the wrist is not enough.

“If Lewis has said that it’s going to be a slap on the wrist, and that there’s going to be no consequence, then he’s not aware of what consequences we can implement.”

Wolff declined to elaborate, but said that Mercedes could do ‘a lot’ and added that the team would re-introduce strict team orders to avoid any repeat incidents that gift victories to their rivals.

“We’ve had mega-exciting races where they were fighting fair and square with great excitement for all of us. And at that stage, they were on top of the situation and we were on top of the situation.

“Now it’s come to a point where it’s getting very tight, and probably we need to tackle that with more intensity to make sure we stay within the boundaries we’ve set at the beginning of the season.”

Collision just a racing incident: Rosberg

Rosberg later insisted that he was not to blame.

“I regret that Lewis and myself touched,” said the German. “But I see it as a racing incident — just as the stewards did.”

Making clear that the team saw Rosberg as culpable, Wolff added, “What we saw was that Rosberg was not prepared to take the exit and that caused the collision. That is not something we want to happen.

“We had a collision that could have been avoided, a second-lap collision. It was Rosberg who attacked — and he shouldn’t have done it.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2014.

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