Former W Series driver turned Sky Sports F1 analyst Naomi Schiff believes Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff’s “body language speaks one thousand words”, following an interview he did after the Italian Grand Prix.
It was a disappointing afternoon at Monza for Mercedes, who found themselves third in the pecking order.
George Russell failed to turn his fourth place starting position into a podium and instead fell one place to fifth, whereas Lewis Hamilton made up two spots to claim P6.
Mercedes just didn’t have the pace to take the fight to either Red Bull or Ferrari, who locked out the top four spots.
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Whilst Red Bull have been superior over Mercedes all season, the Silver Arrows will likely be concerned at Ferrari’s impressive performance, with the Italians being a threat in the fight for second in the Constructors’ Championship.
Both Russell and Hamilton were also penalised during the race, although neither had any effect on the result.
Russell was slapped with a five-second time penalty for gaining an advantage off the circuit after exiting the pits, whilst Hamilton received the same time penalty and two penalty points for colliding with Oscar Piastri.
Wolff was clear after the disappointing race that the Silver Arrows can’t be “satisfied” with P5 and P6, given that both Ferrari drivers beat them.
He made several rash comments after the race and was clearly a frustrated individual, even when he wasn’t saying anything at all.
“Body language speaks one thousand words,” Schiff said on Sky Sports F1.
“Sometimes they don’t tell us the full picture and we kind of have to read between what we can see on track and what they tell us.
“But there you can really tell in his demeanour that it’s not the result they wanted.
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“The penalties didn’t help but they weren’t in the fight anyway, today.
“The good thing for them, though, is that consistently they’re more often there than some of the teams around them so it might be a track-specific thing.
“We’ll go to some other tracks this season that will have higher speeds than this track which is something they have to work on for the future.”