Toto Wolff has joked that Red Bull deliberately hampered Max Verstappen’s qualifying at the F1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix to make the race more entertaining.
After looking near-certain to take pole position in Jeddah, Verstappen’s qualifying came to a premature end after he suffered a driveshaft mechanical failure in Q2.
It means Verstappen will start down in 15th on the grid for Sunday’s race.
Given Verstappen and Red Bull’s significant margin over the rest of the field, a race victory isn’t totally out of the question tomorrow.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after qualifying, Wolff quipped that Red Bull did it intentionally to spice up the show.
“Maybe they’ve done it on purpose to win all the way from the back,” Wolff joked.
Karun Chandhok replied: “A deal from Stefano [Domenicali, CEO of F1] to make a good show maybe?”
Wolff added: “Exactly.”
In terms of Mercedes’ qualifying display, it was mixed fortunes with George Russell qualifying fourth, while Lewis Hamilton only managed eighth.
Assessing their performance, Wolff added: “I think it’s where we expected to be. We know we have the deficits that we have and I think we’re within the ballpark – two-tenths up, two-tenths down, whether it’s to be just third or sixth, it doesn’t matter, we need to do the big steps forward in the races to come.”
Hamilton struggled for pace and Wolff admitted Mercedes need to look into the “differences in setup”
“We need to find out. It looked a bit sticky in sector one,” he explained “The time never came together and we need to see what differences in setup we had.”
Keyword: Toto Wolff jokes: ‘Maybe Red Bull did it on purpose?’ after Max Verstappen issue