Wolff on Hamilton Russell crash: 'It looks silly'

Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff has conceded the "unfortunate" collision between Lewis Hamilton and George Russell in Spanish Grand Prix qualifying "looks silly".

The two Silver Arrows came together on the start-finish straight when opening up their final flying laps of Q2, with Hamilton losing his front wing end-plate as a consequence.

Russell would apologise for the incident and fail to reach Q3, whilst Hamilton continued to ultimately secure fifth on the grid.

"It is all down to miscommunication," Wolff told media, including RacingNews365.com.

"Drivers from the same team don't want to crash into each other on the final lap of qualifying.

"It was just an unfortunate situation, George had just launched a lap and Lewis saw it as his last opportunity and didn't see that George was on that lap.

"It looks silly, but it wasn't, it was just miscommunication."

On whether Hamilton's damage cost him the chance of a front-row slot for the race, Wolff insisted: "We lost the front wing but the spec and settings were the same, so that didn't make any difference."

'We need to review'

Both drivers were summoned to the stewards with Russell handed a warning, but asked whether the situation was created by an operational failure, Wolff replied: "It shouldn't happen - teammates should never collide and even with another car, you shouldn't collide in qualifying.

"There are always unfortunate circumstances that can penalise both cars: here, it didn't penalise George because he didn't know, he went onto his lap and Lewis had to change his front wing.

"This is a team effort and something in our communications, we need to review after an incident to avoid it in the future.

"It was not a dramatic situation."