One witness said Wolff had ‘lost his s**t’
Mercedes and Red Bull team principals Toto Wolff and Christian Horner were involved in a furious row during a team principals meeting in Montreal on Saturday.
As revealed by the Daily Mail, tempers boiled over the problems Mercedes have experienced with their car this year since new technical regulations were introduced at the start of the season.
Wolff is concerned about the ongoing effects of ‘porpoising’
One witness present at the meeting said that Wolff “lost his s**t” while another described the Mercedes boss’ outburst as going into “full Abu Dhabi spec” in reference to his meltdown at the Grand Prix last year where Lewis Hamilton narrowly missed out on the title to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
Another member present felt that the Austrian didn’t intend for his points to come across aggressively and that neither he nor Horner, who was equally as responsive to Wolff’s claims, were winners of the argument.
“It was a row on a different scale from any of the press conference spats we have seen before,” said one source.
Wolff’s biggest accusation during the meeting was that other team principals were deliberately allowing a safety issue to continue by sticking to the current regulations which have led to the Mercedes car ‘porpoising.’
Porpoising is effectively when the car bounces hard on its suspension and occurs on the straight when cars gain and lose downforce from the ground-effect aerodynamics beneath the floor of the vehicle.
Verstappen starts on pole position in Montreal
In events on the track Verstappen dominated on a wet surface to take pole position while Alpine’s Fernando Alonso rolled back the years to start at the front of the grid at the grand age of 40.
Carlos Sainz starts just behind them in third while Hamilton is fourth on the grid – despite continuing to suffer from the porpoising issues.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc will start at the back of the grid however after receiving a penalty for taking a new engine.
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