Karun Chandhok questions Mercedes boss' criticism of 'boring' 2023 F1 Azerbaijan GP

F1 presenter Karun Chandhok recently fired back at Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff's comments on how the 2023 F1 Azerbaijan GP was a boring race.

The race in Baku hardly saw any action at the front of the grid since Red Bull's Sergio Perez kept the lead and a consistent gap with his team-mate Max Verstappen. While there were some major overtakes between Aston Martin and Ferrari, the rest of the race was slightly underwhelming.

Wolff commented on how the race weekend was not a thriller since there were hardly any wheel-to-wheel battles apart from George Russell and Max Verstappen battling in the first few laps of the sprint race.

He explained how the FIA should look into these kinds of race weekends and try to make them more interesting.

The Mercedes team boss was quoted as saying by the Metro:

"Today wasn’t a thriller. Just no overtaking. It made it not great entertainment. It needs the tough battles, and I think the highlight [in the sprint] was George [Russell] and Max [Verstappen] being able to battle it out.

"There was none of that in the main race. Even if you are within 0.2 of a second, it is nearly impossible to overtake unless the other driver makes a mistake. We need to really look at it, we need to look at how we can avoid just a boring race."

He added:

"It’s about understanding why it was not entertaining. We have two cars that are sailing off into the sunset on merit and then we have a 20-second gap."

However, F1 presenter Karun Chandhok fired back at the Mercedes team boss by mentioning how boring the 2016 F1 season was when both Mercedes drivers, Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, were fighting each other for the title.

He tweeted:

"Didn't hear much pleading when Rosberg won the utter snoozefest in 2016......?

It was a dig at how dominant Mercedes has been in the past and how boring it was to watch races back in those days, simply because everyone knew that the Silver Arrows would top the charts.

At the moment, only the two Red Bull drivers, Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen, are fighting each other for the world title. The RB19 is so quick that no other team or driver is able to catch it and challenge for the title.

---

George Russell feels a wing-less Mercedes will still be slower than Red Bull

George Russell admits that the pace difference between Mercedes and Red Bull is so massive that a W14 without a rear wing will still be slower than an RB19. He is amazed by how the reigning world champions have managed to find such pace.

The Mercedes driver said:

“We know what the speed difference is. I think we believe we could take the rear wing fully off, and Red Bull would still be quicker than us on the straights, and that's not even a joke. So we don't understand what they're doing. They've clearly done something incredible... Something very, very trick.”

Although Mercedes sits in third place in the constructors' table and is a few points behind Aston Martin, it's still miles adrift of leaders Red Bull.