Mercedes Chief Pokes Fun At Max Verstappen's Dramatic Qualifying Retirement

Toto Wolff jokes about Max Verstappen's retirement from the Saudi Arabian GP qualifying.

Mercedes team principal and CEO Toto Wolff has joked that Red Bull pulled a stunt with Max Verstappen's qualifying retirement in order to put on a "good show".

The qualifying session for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was full of drama which reached a peak when Verstappen unexpectedly had to retire from Q2 with a driveshaft issue. The two-time champion will now be starting the race tomorrow from fifteenth place on the grid, behind Charlies Leclerc despite his ten-place grid penalty. 

Whilst speaking to Sky Sports F1 after qualifying, in which George Russell and Lewis Hamilton finished in fourth and eighth, respectively, Wolff joked that Red Bull may have pulled off the move on purpose to put on more of a show with Verstappen making his way from the back. He explained:

“Maybe they’ve done it on purpose to win all the way from the back."

Sky Sports F1 pundit Karun Chandhok responded: 

“A deal from Stefano [Domenicali, CEO of F1] to make a good show maybe?”

Wolff agreed: 

“Exactly.”

Taking things back to a more serious note, Wolff went on to discuss the performance of the Mercedes team. He continued:

“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.

“We need to find out [about Lewis Hamilton's W14 struggles]. It looked a bit sticky in sector one.

“The time never came together and we need to see what differences in setup we had.”