Mercedes says it hopes Red Bull’s senior management will stop “tarnishing the good name and sporting integrity of Lewis Hamilton” after the FIA rejected its right to review petition.
Red Bull lodged a right to review petition with the FIA over Hamilton’s penalty at the British Grand Prix, following his clash with Max Verstappen.
Senior figures from Red Bull and Mercedes convened virtually ahead of this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix at which alleged new evidence was supplied.
Stewards deemed that Red Bull’s four pieces of evidence did not meet the threshold and expressed “some concern” regarding “certain allegations made in the Competitor’s above letter.”
Those allegations ostensibly made by Red Bull were not made public.
In response to the stewards’ decision Mercedes released a strongly-worded statement.
Mercedes outlined that it “welcomes the decision of the stewards” and went on to criticise Red Bull for its tone.
“In addition to bringing this incident to a close, we hope that this decision will mark the end of a concerted attempt by the senior management of Red Bull Racing to tarnish the good name and sporting integrity of Lewis Hamilton, including in the documents submitted for their unsuccessful right of review.
“We now look forward to going racing this weekend and to continuing our hard-fought competition for the world championship.”
More accurate headline:
Wolff says Red Bull should stop trying to hinder Hamilton’s cheating
Wait a minute. Who was cheating for the five races with a ‘flexible wing’ gaining advantage both through corners and straight line speed. I didn’t realize Hamilton was driving for Red Bull in those races….F1 finally outlawed the flexi wings and Red Bull suddenly is no longer .3 seconds per lap race pace ahead.
A minute? I think you’d better take a couple of hours to have a long, hard bath with yourself. The television cameras proved that Mercedes, and others, had rear wings which were behaving in exactly the same way as those of Red Bull, and Mercedes’s front wings were flexing even more than the Red Bull ones. In any case, no wings were outlawed, the test for flexibility was made more strenuous before the French Grand Prix, and Christian Horner has stated that the Red Bull wings have continued to pass the uprated test. In so far as I am aware, no other teams have failed the tighter tests either. As stated, the test was strengthened before the race in France, which Verstappen won, just as he subsequently won the Styrian and Austrian races, and indeed the Sprint Qualifying race at the British GP weekend. No evidence of any detrimental effect in any of those four races, and since he completed less than half a lap in total of the British GP and Hungarian GP before being smashed out of contention, there is nothing to support a conclusion that the changed test made any difference whatsoever there either. In essence, your argument is garbage.
His reputation was lost at Silverstone
We all saw what happened. Red Bull’s saying exactly what we all saw.
We all saw what happened. Now apply the rules given to teams about what combatants can do when going through corners together. In their ruling race stewards stated that the two cars under the rules were “ adjacent to each other” and thus the cornering rule kicked in which means they are obligated to leave enough room for each other to transit the corner safely. Further, in that scenario, the inside car gets the racing line. You realize that at 180 mph a car adjacent to you cannot simply disappear. Verstappen had two car widths space to his outside, Hamilton had one half car width to his inside and expected Verstappen to go wider. But Verstappen, expecting Hamilton to brake hard to avoid contact as he had done in previous races, cut in hard and ran his rear tire over Hamilton’s front tire and was blown off the track. During that race two other drivers were passed by Hamilton in the same corner at 180 mph. They made it work. Every active F1 driver considered it a racing event not deserving a penalty.