Verstappen not to blame for Silverstone sales says Wolff: 'It's a shame'

The British Grand Prix is yet to sell out for 2024. Although the blame has been placed on the dominance of Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff disagrees. It seems the promoters need to do a better job at selling the tickets, according to the Austrian.

Stuart Pringle, the Managing Director of Silverstone, belives that Red Bull has made it harder for the British Grand Prix weekend to sell out. He suggests that the likelihood of the same winner has made the sport repetitive, and has discouraged fans from attending. Nevertheless, during Lewis Hamilton's period of domination, this didn't appear to be a problem. Pringle also defended the cost of the tickets, and the dynamic pricing system that was used last year. Now, the director hopes that if British teams, like McLaren and Mercedes, can have a strong performances in the two weekends (Spain and Austria) ahead of Silverstone, then perhaps fans might change their minds.

Is Verstappen to blame for Silverstone not selling out?

This season, there have been four different race winners, including Verstappen. This includes Lando Norris, and both Ferrari drivers, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc. In Canada, George Russell also joined the list of pole starters for this season. The top four teams are incredibly close, with 60 points between Red Bull and Ferrari, and just 33 between Ferrari and McLaren. In the Drivers' standings, Norris sits in second, 69 points behind Verstappen.

Therefore, with a tight title battle at the front, Wolff criticised the claims that Verstappen is to blame when speaking in Spain: "I think it's a shame that, if it's true, that it didn't sell out," he said. "We need to look at what can be done better from the promoter's side, I think the racing is exciting. We might be coming up with a good show and in a way, that's not only a home race for the team, it's a home race for myself. I'm living there a lot of the time, so I would very much hope that we have the same buzz around the sport that we had all these years," he concluded.