Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff had mixed emotions after qualifying on Saturday at the Hungarian Grand Prix, as the Silver Arrows had a car at either end of the grid.
Lewis Hamilton snatched a memorable pole position after beating reigning World Champion Max Verstappen by three-thousandths of a second, in what was his first pole since the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Whilst Hamilton claimed P1, George Russell languished down in P18 following an embarrassing Q1 elimination.
Last season’s Hungarian GP pole sitter was far from pleased with his early elimination, with the Briton having blamed Mercedes for taking “too many risks”.
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Russell wasn’t happy with where the Germans positioned him on the circuit, as several drivers tried to find space ahead of their final push lap.
Wolff openly admitted that the team “made a mistake” which led to Russell’s elimination; however, he noted that the “gentlemen’s agreement” had been broken.
“We made a mistake with George,” Wolff said after qualifying on Saturday, as reported by GPFans.com.
“We should have put him in a much better position on track and we’ve apologised to him for that.
“There’s a gentleman’s agreement that you don’t overtake one another as time is running out. He had a number of cars move ahead of him though and that obviously screwed up his last lap.
“We will be fighting tomorrow, and we know it will be tough. The long run pace of others looked strong but form in the race sometimes looks a little different to practice.
“We will be giving it everything we’ve got and see what our car is capable of.”
Interestingly, Russell revealed that such agreement doesn’t exist, much to the contrary of what Wolff believes.
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The Briton did well in the race to recover to sixth, after an impressive overtaking display.
He overtook Carlos Sainz late on for seventh and got within five seconds of Charles Leclerc for sixth, a position he inherited as Leclerc had a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pit-lane.
The result promoted Russell into fifth in the Drivers’ Championship, where he finds himself 43 points behind Hamilton.