Lauda critical of Raikkonen and the delay in restarting the British Grand Prix

(Mercedes AMG F1 Team)

Mercedes AMG F1 Team's Non Executive chairman Niki Lauda has criticized Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen following the Finn's massive 47G crash on the second lap of yesterday's British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

'One criticism I have is that Kimi made a mistake, He went wide, so why does he come in balls out and then crash? Hopefully nothing happened [to hurt him], but it was unnecessary.'

Speaking following the race which his driver Lewis Hamilton won, Lauda was also critical of the time it took to fix the armco barrier that Raikkonen hit. Following the Finn's crash the race was red flagged and was not restarted for an hour while repair work was carried out on the barrier.

When the race was restarted it was under safety car conditions. Lauda felt that the long stoppage was unnecessary. The Austrian said:

'Why then did we stop for one hour to fix one bottom guardrail? There should have been a quicker fix, and a quicker fix could mean put some tyres in front. There are other ways of doing this. This over nursing of F1, being over cautious, over-controlling, drives me mad. And this little guardrail issue is another example.

He went on to say:

'There are too many people involved in making F1 as safe as the roads, which is wrong.

Raikkonen escaped serious injury which is main priority at the time was to ensure that the Finn was ok. The circuit officials made the right call due to the potential however slim it may have been for there to have been another crash along the Wellington straight where driver's reach in excess of 170MPH which could have caused injury or worse to either another driver or spectators.

The safety of fan's, driver's and trackside officials has to be the priority and should not be compromised with a 'quick fix' solution.

Lauda believed that with the delay fans's would have left the circuit to watch the Wimbledon final which was also on at the same time as the race however, there were over 120,000 fans at the circuit on race day and they would not have spent the large sums of money on race ticket's to leave the circuit after just one lap.

© Ben Johnston 2014