Aggrieved' Wolff: 'Mercedes would've won the court case'

Mercedes could win

On Thursday, Mercedes finally announced that they were withdrawing their protest against the final result in Abu Dhabi. Since the Grand Prix, this was still up in the air after the team announced after the race that it wanted to protest against the stewards' decision. Wolff still believes Mercedes would have won in court as well.

''We believe we had a very strong case and in a regular court we are almost guaranteed we would've won.'' However, the problem with sport, according to Toto, is that you can be right, but it is still a longer way to turn that unfairness around as well. The structure has to change according to Wolff.

Hamilton was not decisive

Over the course of the week, several rumours also emerged that Hamilton would be the one to stop Mercedes from protesting, but Wolff says that is not true. ''Every step along the way was a joint decision. We decided together with Lewis to go into protest, to make the second protest and to withdraw the protest.''

''Not only for him but also for us as a team, it was terrible to be confronted with a decision that decided the outcome of the championship. None of us wants to win the championship in the courtroom, but on the other side, we were wronged on Sunday.''

Wolff, therefore, does not speak of a mistake but blames Michael Masi more. ''It wasn't just the case of a bad call. It was a 'freestyle' way of reading the rules and that left Hamilton like a sitting duck. It was tremendously hard for him and us as a team to withdraw the protest, because we were wrong," concludes the Mercedes team boss.