Formula 1 needs more hard racing says Wolff
F1 News
- Bevan Youl
After incident’s and controversy in the past few races in Formula 1 Toto Wolff has said that more hard racing is what is needed for the sport.
Sunday saw Mercedes claim yet another one-two this season as Lewis Hamilton took victory ahead of Valtteri Bottas.
Both of them were battling each other for the lead early on in the race until a safety car gave Hamilton the advantage.
But the close battles between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc coming back in Austia and at the British Grand Prix coming out of the pits and on track, as well as the incident between Sebastian Vettel and Verstappen is what F1 needs more of according to Wolff.
Wolff said (quoted by PitPass): "You can clearly see that the Leclerc/Verstappen incident in Austria is being interpreted exactly in the way it was in Austria, and hard racing is permitted.
"You can push somebody out while exiting the corner.
"I think this is how it is allowed in most of the other formulas and it needs to be between teams.
“I think that's what we all want to see. It is hard racing, but it's something we need to do."
Despite the closeness of the battle between Hamilton and Bottas, Wolff had no worries that his drivers would cause any issues with each other.
"This is exactly what we debated, I don't want to see any of this in an intra-team battle and I think I have no doubt they know how to race each other,” he added.
"We have seen that on many occasions between Lewis and Valtteri, they respect each other off track and they respect each other on track, to take it another step it is fair enough if you race against another team.
“What I think what we've seen between some of the other drivers is borderline dirty.
"There is always dirtiness we want to see out there in racing and it is good when it is drivers going against each other but not in the same team."