F1 News

Wolff wants to meet victims after controversy around new partnership

3 December 2021 at 15:36
Last update 3 December 2021 at 17:46
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  • GPblog.com

This week Mercedes announced a new partnership with Kingspan. This caused a stir on social media because of the fire that broke out at Grenfell Tower on June 14, 2017, in which dozens of people died. Kingspan was found to be responsible for the rapid spread of the fire.

In a letter, team boss Toto Wolff defends the cooperation with the company, but he also apologizes to the victims following the letter they sent towards Wolff.

"On behalf of our team, I would sincerely like to apologise to you for the additional hurt that this announcement has caused. It was never our intention to do so," the Mercedes team boss writes in the letter.

Wolff wants to meet victims

He continues: "The work of the public inquiry to establish the full causes of the tragedy is crucially important. Prior to concluding our partnership, we engaged with Kingspan in-depth to understand what role their products played in what happened at Grenfell. Kingspan have stated that they played no role in the design or construction of the cladding system on Grenfell Tower and that a small percentage of their product was used as a substitute without their knowledge in part of the system which was not compliant with building regulations and was unsafe."

Wolff ends the letter with a personal suggestion to get together with the victims of the disaster after all the outcry. The full letter can be read below in Mercedes' tweet.