$1.6B worth Mercedes boss Toto Wolff defends McLaren after the F1 Hungarian GP team order debacle

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff (worth $1.6 billion as per Forbes) has come out in defense of McLaren, who faced severe backlash for its team orders debacle in Hungary. The race in Budapest saw their drivers, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, finish 1-2.

With the looming threat of Lewis Hamilton's undercut being a concern, the team opted to give Norris the first service of changing to fresh tyres, which led to a reversal of positions when Oscar Piastri also pitted for fresh tyres.

After the final round of pitstops, McLaren's strategy led to Norris leading the race and Piastri behind. After some back and forth between Norris and his engineer, the driver finally gave the lead back to his teammate.

The entire debacle led to a lot of backlash against McLaren, as the team put its lead driver, Norris, in an impossible position. Wolff, though, said that these are some of the things that are learnt with time, telling Racingnews365:

“You can only manage the situations when you actually run into it, and you find yourself exposed. That is the first time that it happened to them."

He added:

“We only learned from our experiences, in how we can manage a situation where two cars, two drivers can win in the same team, and you like to collect points without giving up a drivers' championship. I am sure they are going to sit down and come up with something.”

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Mercedes boss Toto Wolff backs McLaren to come up with an action plan for the future

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff backed McLaren's senior leadership to go back to the drawing board and figure things out. He looked back at how Mercedes had created the terms of engagement for their drivers when Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg first got their hands on a frontrunner. He said:

"We came up, back in the day, first with the rules of engagement, and then we didn't want to call it rules anymore, so we called it racing intent. I am sure there is going to be a paper soon that is going to come out."

He added:

“I have no doubt that Andrea [Stella] and Zak [Brown] have very strong leadership and it is about defining that framework, and what is happening in each of those possible situations."

Heading to Spa, Mercedes and McLaren will look to make the most of the race, especially with Max Verstappen serving a grid penalty for the new engine. Both teams have two wins each this season.