F1 has been yearning for a titanic rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, arguably the two best drivers of the last decade. As Verstappen and Red Bull have charged to become the leader of both the drivers and constructors world championship, things came to a head at the British GP where an overly aggressive Lewis Hamilton collided with Verstappen while he took the lead of the race at Silverstone. Verstappen crashed out of the race which caused the resulting controversy around a 10-second penalty which was deemed too lenient was Hamilton won the race despite it and the extreme racist vitriol against the 7-time world champion. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff is of the belief that if things don't cool down between the two drivers, there will be more crashes.
"I think that the intensity has increased since Silverstone. It certainly will not be the last time they fight for position and hopefully, they can do it in a sportsmanlike way. And, if not, we will see more collisions," said Wolff.
There has been an argument that claimed that Verstappen should've backed off as he had a commanding lead in the world championship and overall had the faster car which would've enabled him to overtake Hamilton either on the track or via pitstop strategy. The fact that Verstappen crashed he lost a big chunk of his lead on Hamilton and faces further potential penalties if his engine is not recoverable and needs changing. In light of the F1 budget cap, this also makes development hard for Red Bull as the damage to Verstappen's car has been estimated to cost the Milton Keyes team $1.8 million.
Hamilton was criticised for celebrating the win at Silverstone when Verstappen was in the hospital
"I think part of his [Hamilton's] success is not only his race craft, but also his maturity. Long-term strategy is important in order to win championships because you need to score points. It has come to a situation that ceding a track position has been part of the pattern of the last few races. This time neither of them conceded and it ended up in a heavy collision," said Wolff praising Hamilton's long term thinking something Verstappen is yet to hone.
When asked about what was harder a bitter fight against a driver from a rival team or in-team rivalry like the one Mercedes had to manage between 2014 and 2016 when Hamilton and Rosberg were together and fighting for the championship, Wolff said the internal fight was harder to manage but the external fight was harder to predict.
"The external ones are easy to deal with. This is far away from the controversy that we had within the team. Those are very difficult to manage because you need both drivers in a good headspace to win the constructors' championship, and to drive respecting the team's values and the mighty Mercedes brand. The external fight, this is how F1 has always been and not something that is difficult to manage," said the Austrian who is also a 33 per cent co-owner of the team.
