Toto Wolff clears the air over 'emergency meeting' as Mercedes write-off major suspension upgrade in Hungarian GP 

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has set the record straight on reports of an 'emergency meeting' for the team post-Spa and claimed that there was no such crisis. Soon after the race in Belgium, driver George Russell said that the team needed to reassess and see what went wrong during the development process.

The conditions in Spa were cooler, and that is precisely the set of circumstances where Mercedes tends to thrive, just like it did last season when it won the race with Lewis Hamilton. This time around, however, the car was clearly slower than the top 3 teams and was getting challenged by Williams as well.

After the race, multiple publications reported that Mercedes was having an emergency meeting to understand where things had gone wrong. Coming to Hungary, the team ran the old suspension and has gotten rid of the suspension upgrade introduced earlier in the year.

Talking to Sky Sports Germany, however, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff refuted any suggestions of a crisis meeting, as he said that it was just one of the many regular meetings that get scheduled from time to time. He said:

"That’s always such nonsense - this talk of a 'crisis meeting. We have meetings every week to assess where the car stands and what we can improve. And one of those meetings was last week, exactly as planned, with the drivers. We do that regularly, every few months. That was the 'big' meeting. And it was very interesting."

George Russell opens up on the Mercedes 'meeting'

It was George Russell's comments post Spa that appeared to be the catalyst for the reports that were published, as the driver had claimed that the team needed to sit and analyze where things had gone wrong. The driver clarified to the media that he might have overstated his comments in his explanation.

"I think my comments about a big meeting were probably exaggerated a bit because we talk monthly with everyone back at the factory. We talk, obviously, weekly with the people who are here on the race-team side of things, so it's nothing abnormal."

He added:

"That meeting was actually planned probably three or four weeks ago, just as all of these meetings are. But clearly our performance as a team has gone backwards in the last six or seven races, and we're trying to unpick why that may have been."

Whether there was a crisis meeting or not is unclear. It is, however, clear that the team has now ditched the upgraded suspension, and the drivers appear to be much more comfortable with the car in Hungary.