Toto Wolff passes judgement on ‘cheeky’ and ‘annoying’ Max Verstappen

Toto Wolff weighed in on Max Verstappen’s “cheeky” radio messages during the Belgian Grand Prix…

Verstappen could be heard in a snippy radio exchange with his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase during the Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.

Having romped his way into the lead from his sixth-place grid slot, the reigning World Champion set about establishing a dominant lead over Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez before the radio exchange.

Max Verstappen: Radio messages are ’50/50′ on being serious…

Verstappen’s dominance and confidence at the front of the race were such that the reigning World Champion was willing to make an extra pit-stop just for the challenge of it.

Lambiase had pointed out to Verstappen that his first set of tyres had shown “reasonable degradation” and asked his driver to “use his head a bit more”.

Verstappen clearly wasn’t thrilled about the admonishment, replying: “I could also push on and we do another stop? A little bit of pit stop training.”

Lambiase replied: “No. Not this time.”

Asked about the nature of the snippy messages after the race, Verstappen said they are semi-serious in meaning.

“Probably 50/50 on the messages,” he said.

“I know that the team doesn’t like to do another stop, but I like to mention it so they might get a bit nervous.

“I like the response ‘No, no, we are not doing that today’. It’s fine. We know each other very well and we have a very good relationship.”

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Toto Wolff: Max Verstappen has every reason to be cheeky

Asked about whether the nature of Verstappen’s radio messages could be viewed as cocky, and whether they serve as extra motivation for Mercedes as they are nowhere near able to contend with the pace of the Dutch driver, Wolff said Verstappen has earned the right to be a bit cheeky.

“He has all reason, all reasons to be a bit cheeky,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com.

“He’s just driving everybody else around in circles and it’s on merit.”

But Wolff admitted that the messages were somewhat irksome.

“There’s nothing else to say and you’ve got to watch that…” he said.

“On the one hand, as much as it is annoying… that’s just about the lot.”

Wolff also explained that he feels the true difference between Red Bull and Mercedes is being made by the Dutch driver, given that Perez was left standing by his teammate.

“I think you can even take [Sergio] Perez into the equation, we are racing each other,” the Austrian said.

“我们似乎following similar development routes, but there’s just one car that is faster today. That was one and a half seconds a lap [faster] when he was pushing at the beginning of the race. So we’ve got to get on top of it.

“I think you just need to take Max out of the equation. The second Red Bull is where we are.

“[Without Verstappen] it would be a fantastic season and close racing. But you know, in the sport, the stopwatch never lies.

“There’s just one guy in one car that’s above everything else and we’ve just got to catch up, there’s no choice.”

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