Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff feels "somebody needs to open their eyes" over the "ugly" impeding that he believes hindered Lewis Hamilton in Dutch Grand Prix qualifying. Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso apparently blocked Hamilton in the wet conditions during Q1 at Zandvoort, and although the stewards declined to take further action against the Spaniard, teammate Lance Stroll was called to see them over his own alleged impeding of the Mercedes driver. Hamilton was also a victim of alleged impeding from Yuki Tsunoda in Q2 - although he rejected the idea that this was a reason behind his shock exit and failure to reach Q3. With the number of blocking incidents across qualifying sessions in F1 growing consistently, Wolff has called for action.
Wolff irate over impeding
"Lewis has had good pace all weekend, and it is really painful to see [the gap between Hamilton and Russell] because of traffic and not going into Q3 which he would have deserved," Wolff told media including RacingNews365. "The impeding is pretty ugly to look at. I don't know whether it has become a bit of a pattern because people simply don't care and they don't get penalised. "If I look at the impeding from Alonso in Q1, that is clear impeding and there was no further investigation. "Somebody has to open their eyes, and [the impeding] cost [Hamilton a spot in] Q3. "But having said that, George has been working his way through the weekend, and when it mattered, he was right there. "Maybe we could have extracted a little bit more because the [slick] tyre wasn't ready for sector one and he was three-tenths off from his previous best, but we need to be happy with it."
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