Toto Wolff Launches Profane Rant at Mercedes Rivals After Christian Horner Moan

Mercedes Formula One boss Toto Wolff has launched a foul-mouthed response to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner's call for engine equalisation after the first Grand Prix of the new season in Australia.

Wolff's team continued their dominance from last year as world champion Lewis Hamilton led Nico Rosberg to a convincing Mercedes one-two in Melbourne.

In the wake of Sunday's race, Horner—whose Red Bull team endured a poor weekend—called for the FIA to attempt to redress Mercedes' clear superiority over all the other cars in the paddock.

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Wolff responded unhappily to Horner's comments, suggesting that the other teams should simply work hard on their own cars, per Byron Young in the Mirror:

"

I think ‘just get your f-----g head down, work hard and try to sort it out’. I didn’t mean the F-word in relation to him [Horner]. If you come into Formula One, try to beat each other and perform at the highest level and then you need equalisation after the first race - you cry out after the first race - that’s not how we’ve done things in the past. There is this wall in Jerusalem that you can stand in front and complain, maybe the guys should go there.

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Red Bull finished way off the pace on Sunday, Daniel Ricciardo back in sixth, more than a lap behind Hamilton, and Daniil Kvyat forced to retire.

Hamilton beat Rosberg to victory by over a second, but the German was over half a minute ahead of third-placed Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari. 

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Such dominance from Mercedes is clearly worrying the other teams, with Horner suggesting it could be bad for the sport, per Young's report:

"

Take nothing from Mercedes, they have done a super job. The FIA have a torque sensor and they can see the power output that every engine is producing. They have the facts and they could quite easily come up with a way of a form of equalisation. Without that I fear the interest in the sport will wane.

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Similarly, former world champion Vettel is concerned that Mercedes' continued dominance will lead to another two-man fight for the title this season, per Eurosport:

There seems to be a certain irony within Horner and Vettel's comments considering the pair dominated the sport in four consecutive world championship-winning seasons for the German and Red Bull.

There were similar rumblings about the banality of single-team dominance between 2010 and 2013, the difference being that Mercedes is now the team on top, not Red Bull.

However, a more competitive championship would indeed surely be more interesting than the current ongoing battle between Rosberg and Hamilton, although there will likely be many who agree with Wolff that the other teams simply need to catch up, rather than a rule change being introduced to manufacture parity.