It appears Mercedes AMG F1’s air of invincibility developed over 8 consecutive years of winning F1 titles now extends to political insensitivity. Lewis Hamilton earlier this week intervened on the USA constitutional debate over abortion criticising the Pro Life Supreme Court judges.

Toto Wolff now takes his turn and appears to have been manipulated by Chinese media.

Speaking to Xinhau he commented, “I’d like to not only race in Shanghai, I’d also like to race in Beijing. It’s a fantastic market for us as Mercedes, and I believe we should be embedded there with a strong footprint.

“We have three races in the US now and if we can do the same thing in China, that would be great.”

F1 hasn’t been to China since 2019 and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, which much of the international community blames on China. The republic is still perusing a zero Covid policy, locking down millions of citizens and entire cities while the rest of the world is learning to live with the virus.

This has caused chaos in global supply chains that together with Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine is causing a world wide cost of living crisis.

Further, China has refused to criticise Russia for it’s illegal actions and as certain international agencies claim is secretly supporting Russia by the purchase of oil being rejected by European nations.

Whilst there is no hard evidence China has supplied Russia’s ailing army with military equipment, this cannot be ruled out.

Yet were China to actively support Russia, then the US lef coalition would likely introduce sanctions on the People’s Republic too. It would then be hard to see F1 there going there for some time.

Given the Chinese driver on the F1 grid racing for Alfa Romeo, the Chinese media have unprecedented access to the great and good of the F1 paddock.

It appears Toto Wolff has naïvely responded to a question from Xinhau, and put his foot in his mouth inadvertently commenting on sensitive global geopolitics which he appears to know little about.