With the second half of the Formula 1 season threatening to stir up an intra-team battle royale, Mercedes will ensure it will not repeat its previous title civil war.
Toto Wolff has made clear he won’t tolerate a repeat of the corrosive rivalry that once defined Mercedes’ garage, warning that any driver who lets a title fight boil over into open warfare will simply be removed from the team.
George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli are behind the wheel of what is, overall, the best car on the grid, but have also been thwarted by some some reliability issues and an admirable fightback from Ferrari.
The 11 races contested so far has seen Mercedes win eight, with Antonelli banking six to Russell’s two, rewriting the original pre-season script of the Brit being the firm title favourite.
Antonelli was very much the riskier betting man’s tip, entering a second season off the back of a debut campaign which saw him pick up criticism early on after some unimpressive performances.
But either side of Russell’s second win in Austria, Antonelli has had a scintillating run of form, and now enters the summer break 59 points ahead of Russell.
The King’s Lynn man is a further nine points behind former teammate Lewis Hamilton, who has led the Ferrari charge, putting Mercedes on notice, despite its power unit disadvantage to the Silver Arrows.
But, despite the standings’ mathematical shortfall to Russell, he still possesses a more than fair chance of overturning the deficit to take his maiden championship.
I will not allow it – Wolff signals tough stance on Mercedes duo
The German marque has been notorious for its intra-team rivalry in the past, when Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg battled hard between 2014 and 2016, the pair often clashing on-track, to the dismay and fury of their Team Principal.
In an interview with RacingNews365, Wolff, when asked if the team could ever descend into the kind of feud that gripped the team by Hamilton and Rosberg, left no room for ambiguity in his answer.
“I will not allow it,” he said. “That’s never going to happen to me again,” he said, adding that the same applies to the wider team and that he would be prepared to drop a driver outright rather than let internal conflict fester again.
If Antonelli and Russell are to battle for a first title, the pair will need to keep it clean if they are to curry favour with Wolff.
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