Toto Wolff takes cheeky swipe at Martin Brundle during Monaco GP grid walk

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff joked with Martin Brundle during his grid walk ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix. As Sky Sports F1 pundit Brundle said that he hadn’t spoken to Wolff in some time, the Austrian joked “You never come to see me where I am now!” in reference to Mercedes qualifying further down the grid than in recent years.

The start of the Monaco Grand Prix was suspended after a formation lap because rain began to lash down on the track.

Brundle asked Wolff about the Mercedes car when the drivers were called back to the garage and he said: “It’s nice to get it wrong sometimes, for more success in the future. The car is the same, and very unpredictable for the drivers. In a city circuit, it’s really uncomfortable.”

When asked by Brundle how Lewis Hamilton was coping ahead of the race amidst the delay, Wolff replied: “You can see the majority, he is coping really well in collaboration with George [Russell] in terms of strategy today. He is up for it, he is a team player.”

Hamilton had bemoaned bad luck for his disappointing start to the season, which has seen the seven-time world champion sit in sixth in the overall standings, and revealed before the race that he was praying for rain so that he would have a better chance of overtaking his rivals from eighth place.

Hamilton got his wish, as rain delayed proceedings at Monaco by over an hour. There were calls to start the racer sooner than it was, as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: “It is the right thing to have stopped it now, I am not sure why it didn’t get going. But now, obviously, it is too wet to be having a race out there. We were neutral to it, we definitely needed something, whether it be a safety car or something like that, we needed a bit of an unknown.

“If we were starting on pole position we would be a lot less happy with the weather than starting on the second row because it creates a lot of opportunities. As we are in Monaco it is a bit of a lottery now. If it was like now I think a standing start would just be dangerous. We are expecting rain for the next 10 minutes then it starts to get better, so if it does get a little better a standing start would be preferable.”

Brundle’s joke with Wolff was not the only entertaining moment of the grid walk, as he was shut down by Bridgerton star Simeone Ashley’s bodyguard as he attempted to conduct an interview.

He was told that Ashley didn’t want to speak on TV, to which Brundle replied: “She doesn’t want to do any TV? Well we are kind of halfway there already. It’s so good to see her on the grid. I’m not going to push but I’d like to have a chat with you. That’s fine, whatever.”