Wolff responds to Horner’s Hamilton criticism: ‘It takes two to tango’

The championship rivals came to blows at Copse on the opening lap of Sunday’s race as Hamilton attempted an ambitious lunge for the lead, sending Verstappen hurtling into the barriers after the pair made contact.

Hamilton received a 10-second time penalty for the incident but turned in a remarkable fightback drive to claim his eighth British GP victory.

The stewards decision angered Red Bull’s Christian Horner and Helmut Marko, who felt the seven-time world champion had got off lightly, with Horner blasting Hamilton’s move as “desperate” and “amateurish”.

“I mean everybody has an opinion, and that’s OK,” Wolff said in response to Horner’s criticism. “Of course every team will have a certain bias towards incidents like that.

“It is a situation that I guess we all have seen in the past when great drivers race with each other. When nobody is prepared to give in, then these kind of situations can happen. But for me it takes two to tango.

“I think if that would have been a low- or mid-speed corner then it wouldn’t have been a big debate what the consequence for that was - a five or ten-second penalty - or less of a debate,” he added.

“But it was a high-speed impact. It is a corner that takes lots of guts to even take flat alone, and when two cars are trying to drive through it they need to leave each other space in order to make it through the corner and that wasn’t the case.

“The stewards think ten seconds was appropriate, I guess because both drivers were part of the accident, not one alone. It’s always much more nuanced.”

But Wolff played down the suggestion that the collision could make the 2021 F1 title fight even more intense.

“This championship was always very intense because we are fighting with everything we have in order to hold onto this championship while knowing we are not performing as Red Bull and Honda,” he said.

“Therefore we’ve had big points losses in the past and today we scored big points, so that is always balancing itself out.”

Asked if it is important to try and defuse the situation, Wolff joked: “Why? You would love that, no? It’s a lot to write about! I’m ready, let’s go for this.”