Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg proved during their time together at Mercedes that an internal team battle for the World Championship can turn friends into enemies. Particularly during the 2016 season, in which Rosberg ultimately came out on top, the two team-mates battled each other to the limit \u2013 and sometimes even beyond.<\/p>\n
One person who had to watch it all unfold from the front row was team principal Toto Wolff. The Viennese manager left no stone unturned in his efforts to steer his prot\u00e9g\u00e9s\u2019 rivalry back onto an orderly course. With limited success, as the pair came too close for comfort on more than one occasion. And the bitter battle for the World Championship title did not have a positive effect on the team.<\/p>\n
That is why Wolff is determined to avoid a similar situation arising this year between Kimi Antonelli and George Russell at all costs. The Italian leads the World Championship by a comfortable margin; his closest challenger is his predecessor, Lewis Hamilton, who is now chasing points for Ferrari. The seven-time world champion trails the teenager at the top by 50 points. Russell follows in third place in the championship, 59 points behind his team-mate.<\/p>\n
Driver swap not ruled out<\/p>\n
The pair have engaged in a number of close wheel-to-wheel battles so far, but have not made any major mistakes. When asked by colleagues at \u201cRacingNews365.com\u201d whether he feared a repeat of the scenes from the Hamilton and Rosberg championship battle, Wolff gave a clear answer: \u201cI won\u2019t allow that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t let something like that happen again. It will never happen to the team again. It\u2019s as simple as that. If I have to, I\u2019ll replace a driver,\u201d the 54-year-old Austrian made clear. He is confident that Russell can return to his former form. \u201cIn Montreal, he was leading the race before he retired. That would have secured him another victory and would also have put him in a better mental state for the subsequent races.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be fair, it must also be said that we had a problem with the power unit in his car, which we didn\u2019t spot for a long time. That cost him at least two tenths. And, of course, the pressure on George was also immense, as he was initially regarded as the clear favourite. Kimi hadn\u2019t scored points in any of his races last year, but this season he\u2019s been very good. And suddenly expectations change, and you find yourself playing catch-up. But if there\u2019s one driver who can handle that, it\u2019s George, because he\u2019s a tough guy. The best drivers can turn things around, which is why I have no doubt that he can do it,\u201d emphasises Wolff, referring to the Briton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg proved during their time together at Mercedes that an internal team battle for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-839187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}