Toto Wolff has compared the Brazil incident to the one that happened at Silverstone, saying that they were in essence the same thing.
At Interlagos, Max Verstappen pushed Lewis Hamilton off the track and shockingly did not get a penalty. Mercedes appealed against it, but were denied by the FIA.
Many fans grumbled that the same thing had been done at the British GP with the roles reversed. There, Hamilton was at fault, but the core of the two incidents was the same – a driver not leaving space and doing dangerous driving. The only difference was that there was a crash in the UK.
Wolff compared the Brazil incident to the one that happened at Silverstone, and questioned the difference in decision for both incidents.
“I think the outcome in Silverstone was a much more severe one and nobody liked the pictures. But the philosophical question remains the same,” he said, as quoted by GP Fans.
“If the outside driver doesn’t cede room then they collide. And they would have collided in turn four at Interlagos if Lewis wouldn’t have opened up and run even wider.
“I think the regulation that can be applied is the same,” he concluded.
Apples and oranges
Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner insisted that the two incidents were very different, and they couldn’t possibly be compared.
“I don’t think it is a contradiction because you’ve got two different corners, two different circumstances, two different car positionings and I think that at Silverstone you’ve got a gravel trap and a wall,” he said.
“The overspeed that was at Silverstone was incomparable with what there was at Interlagos.
“I think that you could see at Interlagos that both drivers have braked late, they have arguably out braked each other, but at no point was Lewis in a position to turn into the corner as Max was at Silverstone.
“Of course, the difference at Silverstone was that we had a driver end up in hospital, we had a car destroyed, we had an engine destroyed and a driver eliminated from the race. This was a racing incident,” he concluded.
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