Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, Toto Wolff was understandably disappointed with Lewis Hamilton’s retirement in Malaysia after comfortably leading the race at the time of the engine failure.
“It’s hard to know how to sum up a day like today. I just have no words for what happened to Lewis. We feel his pain. This is a mechanical sport, with so much technology, but sometimes you get blindsided by situations with no rational explanation.”
Wolff was unsure of what actually happened to Hamilton’s engine but will try and understand the problems that have blighted the British driver throughout the season.
“We take a forensic approach to our work in how we build the engines and how we analyse the failures. We always have done and we will do so again. Our guys will get to the bottom of what happened and learn from it. But I don’t want to talk about forensics on a day like this – I want to focus on how Lewis responded in the aftermath.”
The Mercedes boss praised the response from Lewis and will hopefully understand the problems heading to Japan.
“Instead of venting frustration, he came back to the garage and shook the hand of every team member; we talked in a small group and we were all really down. Then he stood in front of the team and found the words to lift everybody and help us recover quickly for Japan.”
Wolff was pleased with Nico Rosberg’s recovery after being spun around on the opening around, this highlighted the dominate pace of the Silver Arrows.
“He did a brilliant recovery drive back to third place with no mistakes. As for the penalty, I don’t want it to be our focus and it didn’t ultimately cost him any places. But it was a complete nonsense. We all decided that we wanted to see racing and that, if no driver was clearly at fault, then we should let them race.”
With only a week until the Japanese Grand Prix, Wolff is already fully focused on Suzuka and how the team can recover.
