Toto Wolff believes his Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport team were “thrown under the bus” after the FIA publicly revealed two Mercedes team members were the cause of the investigation into Scuderia Ferrari.
An investigation into Ferrari’s energy recovering system took place after concerns about how the team were using it were made at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
The FIA confirmed during the Monaco Grand Prix weekend that they were “satisfied” with what they saw on Thursday practice at the Circuit de Monaco when they fitted software to analyse the ERS system on the Ferrari.
Charlie Whiting had said the matter was “exacerbated by unsubstantiated allegations” that came from two ex-Ferrari workers in Lorenzo Sassi and James Allison who are now at Mercedes.
Wolff felt the FIA has thrown members of his team “under the bus”.
“One of my roles is to protect my people, and if certain individuals are named in the wrong context, that is disturbing,” said Wolff. “Various teams question the FIA every single day.
“I think it’s just important to not put someone out there and say: “This person has questioned a legality problem’. “If you say a team has done it, that’s perfectly fine, that’s modus operandi.
“But picking out individuals, I don’t think is the right thing to do.”
Despite the complaint being made by members of his team, Wolff is accepting of the FIA’s findings into their closest championship rivals and has no plans to protest or appeal the findings.
“The FIA has made a public statement about the situation, and as they are the governing body they are perfectly entitled to do so,” he said. “No judgement has been made on anything.
“No protest has been launched, no enquiry has been done. Just the press statement from the FIA and we trust them. If they have looked at things, that’s perfectly fine.”
