Despite a finger-wagging exchange, James Vowles insists he and Toto Wolff were not frustrated with one another in Monaco, but with the regulations.

Regulations that Vowles says Williams were “forced” to exploit to bring home a double points haul at the Monte Carlo street race.

James Vowles: Toto Wolff was shouting but…

The Williams team-mates, led by Alex Albon, lined up ahead of the Mercedes pairing at the Monaco Grand Prix when a wretched qualifying that included a power unit issue for George Russell and a crash for Kimi Antonelli saw them eliminated in Q2 in P14 and 15.

Russell and Antonelli made gains on the track as they were amongst the very last to complete their mandatory two stops, but couldn’t break into the top 10 as Racing Bulls and Williams played the team game.

Racing Bulls were the first to do it, using Liam Lawson to hold up the field to allow Isack Hadjar to make both of his pit stops by lap 20 of the 78-lap Grand Prix.

Seeing what was in play ahead of them on the track, Williams adopted the same tactic as Carlos Sainz held up the field for Alex Albon, and then Albon returned the favour for his team-mate.

The frustration got to Russell, who was running behind Albon, and he cut the Nouvelle Chicane to overtake Albon, blaming the Williams driver’s “erratic” driving for his actions.

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Told by the Mercedes pit wall to give the position back to Albon, Russell said he’d rather cop to a penalty than do so. The stewards promptly slapped him with a drive-through.

Albon and Sainz finished the Grand Prix ninth and tenth, bringing in another three points for Williams, while Russell was 11th.

Wolff and Vowles were later caught on camera in what appeared, given the amount of finger-wagging, to be a terse exchange.

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Vowles has denied this, adamant that the only frustration was towards the regulations, not one another.

“So Toto, he was only shouting because it was loud in the pit lane but what we were talking about is, how do we make these rules better?” the Williams team principal said on his team’s Instagram page.

“So what he was talking about was, do we set a maximum time that you can go slower? And I think I’ve read recently, he talked about that openly in the media as well.

“What I was talking to Toto about is, I wonder if we use a joker lap? Much like what George actually did in the end, where he overtook effectively off track.

“But do you allow that to happen several times a race in order to create a different opportunity? Because cars simply won’t slow down anymore, you can’t as a result of it, and it means you can get yourself out of traffic.

“That was the very brief conversation that took place in the pit lane, but it’s not a frustration towards each other.

“It’s a frustration towards the regulations, and ultimately how the race panned out, which was where we were forced to go.”

On his side, Wolff told the media, including PlanetF1.com, that Vowles actually apologised mid-race for the negative tactics that Williams were having to use.

“He sent me a text, in the race,” said the Mercedes team principal. “‘I’m sorry, we had no choice given what happened ahead’.

“I answered: ‘We know’.”

With Formula 1 set to remain in Monaco until 2030 at the earliest, questions are being asked about what the sport can do to improve the spectacle after the mandatory two-stops failed.

Former F1 driver Nick Heidfeld proposed the Russell-esque “joker” lap.

“A minimum time won’t work,” he told Sky Deutschland. “The teams and the drivers will start to go to the limit again, maybe just stay in the limit, then hope that the first or just the second driver will be behind them. There is always a bit of a traffic jam.

“The fact that the minimum time is undercut and there is then a penalty sounds good at first glance, but you have to think it through further.

“Maybe instead of pit stops, something like a joker lap, as we have in other series. You would have to see where you can do that on the track. That once or twice in the race you can either take a shortcut or a part where you drive a longer distance and then be a little slower or a little faster and thus overtake.”

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