Toto Wolff received a text from James Vowles in the race to apologise for the negative strategy that Williams ran, which wrecked Mercedes’ Monaco Grand Prix.

Mercedes had a wretched Saturday in Monaco, George Russell suffering an electrical issue and Kimi Antonelli crashing out, which put the team-mates 14th and 15th on the grid.

Mercedes received sympathy message from Williams in Monaco

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Their efforts to recover to score points were blighted by Williams’ strategy.

On a track where overtaking is extremely difficult, the Williams team-mates qualified ahead of the Mercedes pairing, and were running ahead of Russell and Antonelli.

Carlos Sainz slowed his pace by a handful of seconds to slow the cars behind, including the Mercedes drivers, in order to make a gap for Alex Albon to easily pit without losing positions.

Albon then returned the favour with his “dangerously slow” driving frustrating Russell to the point that the Briton cut the Nouvelle Chicane to pass Albon.

Told that he had to give the position back, Russell defiantly stated he would rather “take the penalty” than give the position back. Russell was given a drive-through by the stewards for as they stated that his radio message made it clear that his actions were “done deliberately”.

Amidst it all, Mercedes had sympathy from one team boss – Williams’ James Vowles.

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“He sent me a text, in the race,” Wolff told the media, including PlanetF1.com. “‘I’m sorry, we had no choice given what happened ahead’.

“I answered: ‘We know’.”

Wolff has a close relationship with Vowles, his former right-hand man at Mercedes, and conceded the Briton had to do what was best for his own team.

“James is one of my guys, and I don’t want to sound patronising because he is making a career as a team principal and is doing really well. He had to do it,” he said.

“It’s two cars in the points and I think where it started was the Visa RBs backed us off and that’s what he had to do.”

Williams scored three points in Monaco to move onto 54 overall, P5 in the Constructors’ Championship.

Vowles admitted he wasn’t happy with the strategy but that he had to do what was best for his team.

“This isn’t how I like to go racing, but that’s what the rules have created,” he told Sky F1 during the race. “From my position this is a difficult afternoon.”

But it does beg the question, could Mercedes have done something different?

The last team to pit their drivers, Mercedes’ strategy was completely opposite to the likes of Oliver Bearman or Lance Stroll who covered their mandatory two stops within the first 20 laps.

But pointing out that neither of them scored, Wolff says Mercedes’ strategists explained that wouldn’t have helped Russell and Antonelli given their grid slots.

“We had quite some interesting discussion on strategy,” hee explained. “And I said, Well, ‘let’s do that, stop early, come out, and then catch up’.

“It’s what we did in DTM back in the day. It was fantastic. You stopped, you were last and you won the race.

“But the more intelligent people in our strategy group demonstrated to me that that’s not going to work here in Monaco. It was the best strategy. You can see that the ones that did that – Bearman – didn’t change anything.

“It wouldn’t have scored us points.”

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