Mercedes Formula 1 Team Principal Toto Wolff made a rare appearance at the podium of the Monaco Grand Prix last weekend to celebrate that his driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli had won the race, fifth Grand Prix victory in a row, that puts him at the top of the championship with 156 points, ahead of Lewis Hamilton, 90, and his teammate George Russell, 88 points.
F1 rules require that one representative from the driver that won the Grand Prix must be present at the ceremony to collect a prize on behalf of the constructor, and Wolff had gone ten years without doing it... "because it's always difficult to balance between one side of the garage being happy, the other one not", as Mercedes F1 Team CEO explained on Sky Sports.
Because the member that was supposed to do it had left earlier, Wolff picked the award personally, and it's something that causes "mixed feelings" because while joy was huge for Antonelli, the youngest F1 leader ever, his teammate George Russell suffered another series of misfortune that caused him to drop from the points, with no fault of his own.
Wolff said that the team "let him down" in the Canadian GP, when his power unit malfunctioned, and also in Monaco, while in Monaco a he suffered a pit-lane speeding penalty that the team made worse by failing to serve it correctly. "He could have had a podium if not for the penalty mistake".
However, Wolff reminded that the season is long, and that by this time last year, everyone saw Oscar Piastri as champion, and he ended up finishing in third place behind Verstappen and Norris.
