Toto Wolff says Mercedes would “closely look” at the circumstances around Yuki Tsunoda’s Dutch Grand Prix retirement if in a title fight with Red Bull.
The Brackley-based team enjoyed its best race of the year so far at Zandvoort and looked set to gain track position over Max Verstappen after putting both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell onto one-stop strategies.
However, the race turned when Tsunoda pulled over not once but twice, with a pit-stop in between, as he reported what eventually was discovered to be a diff problem on his AlphaTauri.
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But because the resulting Virtual Safety Car helped Verstappen stay ahead of the Mercedes’, it immediately led to conspiracy theories that somehow Red Bull and their sister team had colluded to help Max.
“I don’t know, I am looking at us at the moment in terms of where we need to find performance,” Wolff was quoted by GPFans.com on if Tsunoda’s retirement should be investigated.
“If we were to fight for the championship, that would be something I would closely look at.
“Now what I think needs to be investigated for the safety of drivers and everybody out there is why the driver stopped, unbuckled, did a full lap, came in, the problem wasn’t solved then they put the seatbelts back in and he drove out and stopped the car again.”
LAP 48/72
Tsunoda comes back in to the pits for running repairs before coming out again and immediately encountering problems again. He’s parked up at the side of the track.
⚠️ VIRTUAL SAFETY CAR ⚠️ pic.twitter.com/iWdoYsfImt
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 4, 2022
As for whether Mercedes believes the VSC triggered by Tsunoda cost Lewis Hamilton a victory at Zandvoort, Wolff replied…
“That probably has changed the outcome of the race that maybe we could have won,” he said.
“The simulations said Max would have come out eight seconds behind us with 20 laps to go.
“But it was obviously… he would have probably pitted on the hard at that time and I think we would have had a fair shot at winning the race.
“But in this sport, maybe or not, it is irrelevant. For me, I am not thinking about that anymore, it is gone.”