Two Opposite Managements
It was a Monza GP completely to forget for Ferrari. The Maranello team faced the worst race of the season right in front of the Italian public and had to watch Mercedes celebrate a one-two made historic by Kimi Antonelli’s triumph. It cannot be overlooked how, regardless of the obvious technical differences between the two cars, there was a fundamental difference in the management of the confrontations between their own drivers between the silver arrows’ pit wall and the reds’.
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While a no-holds-barred war exploded between Hamilton and Leclerc within two corners, Antonelli and Russell were ‘scrutinized’ throughout the race by the watchful eye of Toto Wolff and the Mercedes strategists, who tried in every way to avoid problems between the two.
The extremely careful attitude of the Anglo-German pit wall was especially noticeable in the first of the two duels between Russell and Antonelli: not the one that decided the race in the last laps – which was still very fair – but the one that took place between the 16th and 27th laps, before the VSC came out. At that stage of the race, Russell was leading and Antonelli caught up quickly, engaging in a battle of overtakes and counter-overtakes that was however favoring the closing in of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull. So, although the battle between the two silver arrows had not seen particularly unfair maneuvers from either driver until then, Toto Wolff began to issue orders via radio.
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No More Yo-Yo
Almost simultaneously, Russell’s and Antonelli’s engineers both warned them to stop continuously overtaking each other: “Ok George, let’s stop the yo-yo and swapping positions. Let’s focus on building a gap on Verstappen and bringing the race to the end,” was said to the Englishman. At the same time, Peter Bonnington invited Antonelli to “stop the yo-yoing“. At this point, Antonelli, who was behind his teammate at that moment, asked: “Do you want me to stay behind or what?”.
The facts gave the answer: for the next four laps the Italian followed behind Russell, never trying to overtake him and even lifting off in some circumstances to avoid possible contacts. Once the positions were frozen, Russell was told to “focus on creating a gap with Verstappen,” which both he and Antonelli did. Then the Virtual Safety Car came out, allowing Mercedes to pit Antonelli and thus change the strategic dynamic of the race. Certainly, the Brackley pit wall had no hesitation in issuing orders and instructions to their drivers. In Maranello, looking also at recent GPs, can they say the same?
