James Vowles sets the record straight on Toto Wolff exchange in Monaco

Williams team principal James Vowles has set the record straight on what many thought was a heated exchange with Mercedes boss Toto Wolff following the Monaco Grand Prix. 

The mandated two-stop strategy in Monte Carlo led some teams, including Williams, to ask their drivers to slow down and back up traffic to create a pitstop window.

Unfortunately for Mercedes’ George Russell, he was left with a frustrating race stuck behind Williams’ Alex Albon who was doing just that. Many fans assumed that the exchange between Vowles and Wolff, which very quickly circulated across social media, was related to these frowned-upon but legal tactics.

However, during The Vowles Verdict: Monaco, Vowles took the opportunity to clear the air. He explained:

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

“What I was talking to Toto about is, I wonder if we use a joke lap. So, 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.”

Speaking specifically about the Monaco Grand Prix tactics, Vowles commented:

“Before RB started backing the remainder of the field up sufficiently that there was a two-pitstop gap between us and any other points, our goal was to wait either for a VSC safety car, safety car more specifically, in the middle of the race and use that actually to get both stops out of the way and done. So what you can do is obviously change one tyre, come back in straight away, change the second tyre. 

“Now, you’ll probably drop positions but you’ll have all your pitstops done to the end of the race, so that was one plan that was on the table.

“Other than that, with Carlos, it was to run very, very long, effectively expecting a lot of cars trying to undercut each other if they weren’t playing team games towards lap 15 to lap 22, allowing Carlos some free air to try and make his own race.

“In the case of Alex, it was just finding that free air gap relative to everything else. 

“We did discuss stopping on lap one, but we felt that you would succumb too much to the tactics of certain teams that had their cars split up and down the grid or potentially what happened.”