Toto Wolff has clarified his comments over Ferrari's relentless upgrade pace in F1, after Fred Vasseur felt the Mercedes boss was insinuating the Scuderia was "cheating."
After the Austrian GP, Wolff wondered if Ferrari would run out of cost cap money following its strong upgrade pace, which has included big packages in both Miami and Barcelona, and an engine upgrade in Austria.
In contrast, Mercedes' sole big package came in Canada, and although Wolff did not claim that he felt Ferrari was "cheating", Vasseur used the word when first asked about Wolff's comments on Friday at Silverstone.
"When Red Bull is developing or Mercedes is developing, they are geniuses, but when we are developing, we are cheating," the Ferrari boss had said, before adding,: "if you think we overshoot the cost cap, for me, it is going in this direction."
Responding to Vasseur's comments, Wolff did his best to soothe the concerns of the Ferrari boss.
"Fred is very emotional, and if he would have read my comments rather than just a headline, he would have seen that what I said was an observation," Wolff told Sky Sports F1.
"[I said] it would be interesting to see how many updates one can pull out at the end of the season.
"It’s just the emotionality that we all have, and being passionate about team success. I’m fine with that.
"It was misunderstood. If I say things that I want to be understood, I will do so too, but in that case I didn’t mean it."
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