“Got to Be Joking”: Toto Wolff’s Naive Defense Openly Called Out After George Russell Fell Prey to Dubious Call

A Gentlemen’s Agreement. That’s what caused George Russell to lose out in qualifying, according to him, on the podium at the Hungarian GP. With the W14 showing rapid pace throughout the weekend, it was almost certain that both Mercedes’ would make it into the top 10 shootouts on Saturday. But much to Russell’s dismay, he couldn’t even make it out of the first round of qualifying, slotting in eighteenth for the race. And then, as a testament to the pace the W14 had all weekend, his teammate Lewis Hamilton qualified on the pole, making Russell’s back-marker start even more bitter. But how did it get so bad for the young Brit?

The Hungaroring is a short circuit; when all 20 cars are on the grid, there’s bound to be traffic. And unfortunately for Russell, he was smack dab in the middle of traffic in the final sector before starting his final flying lap. And after the cars of Norris, Bottas, and Gasly overtook him in the final corner, it instantly messed up his lap, and he couldn’t do better than P18. When asked about the traffic issues that cost Russell a good starting position for the race, F1 journalist Peter Windsor discussed Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff‘s excuse. In the YouTube live stream, he said, “It’s interesting, in the qualifying report for Mercedes, talking about the traffic issues for George, Toto says, ‘We have a Gentlemen’s Agreement.” 

As per the Mercedes report, Wolff said, “We made a mistake with George. We should have put him in a much better position on track and we’ve apologised to him for that. There’s a gentleman’s agreement that you don’t overtake one another as time is running out. He had a number of cars move ahead of him though and that obviously screwed up his last lap.” But according to Windsor, who’s worked in F1 for a fair share of his life, he’d never heard about such an agreement.

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Windsor added, “Gentlemen’s Agreement? You’ve got to have some gentlemen, haven’t you, to have an agreement. You’ve got to be joking.” The only reason George lost out in qualifying was that Mercedes timed his out-lap all wrong, because of which he had to encounter traffic. And because his previous run wasn’t good enough to put him into Q2, he had to bear the brunt of starting toward the back of the grid. To be fair, though, he ensured he maximized his car’s potential on Sunday.

George Russell made amends on race day in Hungary

After an underwhelming qualifying, George said, “It’s disappointing as the car was more than quick enough to get through. When you don’t get things right, you get punished, and we’ve been punished for sure today. Tomorrow will be extremely hard, but we’ll be fighting, and I’m going to try to come back through.” Despite the Hungaroring being a tough track to overtake on, Russell got the job done.

After a long first sting on the hard tires, Russell pitted for mediums on Lap 29. Coming out in P14 after the stop, he made his way through the field up to P6 using the W14’s pace. And on Lap 47, he came in again to change his tires—another set of mediums—and came out in 8th, with the two Ferraris in front of him. While he passed Sainz on track for P7, he got promoted to P6 owing to the 5-second penalty Leclerc got. All in all, Russell did what he set out to do, and after starting 18th, he finished in a convincing P6.

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What did you think about George Russell’s weekend in Hungary?