‘Pitiful’ – Mercedes Team Principal Wolff slams rivals in car bouncing row ahead of Canadian Grand Prix

Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff has labelled rivals ‘pitiful’ in row over bouncing cars.

In a meeting with other team principals on Saturday at the Canadian Grand Prix, Wolff clashed with Red Bull’s Christian Horner and Ferrari’s Mattia Binotto.

The trio are at odds over a controversial FIA intervention following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as Horner believes it is wrong to penalise teams that have managed to control both porpoising and bouncing.

Mercedes also regard Binotto to have made procedural objections to attempts that could see changes made to cars at this stage.

Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have been most outspoken on the issue as they appear to struggle most.

And Wolff slammed his rivals for putting competition over driver safety.

“This is a sport where you’re trying to keep a competitive advantage or gain it but this situation has gone too far,” Wolff said.

“All drivers – at least one in every team – have said they were in pain after Baku, that they have difficulty keeping the car on track or blurred vision.

“And team principals trying to manipulate what is being said in order to keep their competitive advantage and trying to play political games when the FIA tries to come up with a quick solution to at least put the cars in a better position is disingenuous and that’s what I said.

“I’m not only talking about the Mercedes – all of the cars suffered in some way or other in Baku and still do here.

“The car is too stiff or the car is bouncing, whatever you want to call it. This is a joint problem we are having in F1. It’s a design issue that needs to be solved.

“We will have long-term effects that we can’t even judge and at any time this is a safety risk. Then coming up with little manipulations in the background or Chinese whispers or briefing a driver is just pitiful.”

New rules introduced this year force teams to run the cars close to the ground with minimal suspension, a phenomenon known as ‘ground effect’, which appears to cause the bouncing.

Hamilton suffered in Baku and has been taking painkillers this week while undergoing physiotherapy due to back problems caused by the bouncing.

And his team-mate Russell also struggled with the set up.

He said: “So many different factors, porpoising is one thing that a lot of teams are on top of but the overall stiffness is just immense. It needs to be addressed. There are things that have been taken off the cars from last year to this to make things simpler. But it has had quite a knock-on effect.”