\n<\/p>\n
Toto Wolff has laid out the rules of engagement for George Russell and Kimi Antonelli in the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, with the Mercedes Team Principal wary of a repeat of the fateful 2016 collision between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.<\/span><\/p>\n After a challenging run of races, Russell<\/a> enjoyed a resurgence in Qualifying<\/a> as he secured his third pole position of the season, beating third-placed Antonelli<\/a> by 0.319s to sandwich Ferrari<\/a>\u2019s Hamilton<\/a> in P2.<\/p>\n The Mercedes<\/a> pair previously clashed at the Canadian Grand Prix, which prompted Wolff to review his approach<\/a> to allowing them to race each other \u2013 that was made relevant again this weekend, partly due to painful memories of Hamilton and Rosberg taking one another out of the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Asked whether he would resort to deploying team orders to avoid a similar situation, Wolff told F1 TV: \u201cI think they\u2019re racing for a championship and Kimi will want to show that he\u2019s the one. George wants a good result to say \u2018I\u2019m the one, don\u2019t discount me\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cLewis obviously is in such a good frame of mind that he\u2019s going for the win, so I don\u2019t know how this is going to pan out tomorrow. For me, the primary thing is no contact, but they’re starting behind each other. Kimi\u2019s going to have a good slipstream \u2013 more grey hair!\u201d<\/p>\n Elaborating on his ideal opening lap, he added: \u201cGet through Turn 1 and 2 and 3! Then comes our famous corner, 4, the right-hander where I\u2019ve already had two cars stranded in the gravel bed in 2016.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you think conservatively, you need to think forwards and not start protecting points \u2013 it\u2019s like a football team that starts to defend rather than attack. I think [Antonelli\u2019s] going to be on the attack and that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After Hamilton delivered a brilliant last-gasp lap in Qualifying to snatch second place, Wolff now has the added concern of Ferrari taking the fight to Mercedes and potentially ending their streak of winning every Grand Prix so far this season.<\/p>\n The Scuderia introduced further upgrades in Barcelona<\/a> that Hamilton seemed to maximise, but he will start the race as the team\u2019s sole frontrunner as Charles Leclerc crashed out of Q3<\/a> and failed to set a lap time.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Wolff admitted that they could jeopardise Mercedes\u2019 chances of success as he explained: \u201cOur calculations showed that they\u2019re half a second off on a single lap. Here they rebounded and I guess their upgrade is working \u2013 maybe they were running a bit heavier than us in previous sessions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got to fasten our seatbelts because that upgrade was massive. At the moment in cost cap land we can\u2019t afford to do that, so they are proper challengers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Toto Wolff has laid out the rules of engagement for George Russell and Kimi Antonelli in the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.formula1.com\/image\/upload\/c_lfill,w_2048\/q_auto\/v1740000001\/trackside-images\/2026\/F1_Grand_Prix_of_Barcelona_Catalunya___Qualifying\/2281406509.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"