"Cruising" Gutierrez under fire from Mercedes

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has hit out at Esteban Gutierrez's continued stubbornness as a backmarker, after costing the leaders time in the closing stages of the Singapore Grand Prix.

Toto Wolff, Mercedes AMG F1 Shareholder and Executive Director

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB12 and Esteban Gutierrez, Haas F1 Team VF-16

Gutierrez was battling Felipe Massa for 11th place towards the end of the Singapore race, when leaders Nico Rosberg and Daniel Ricciardo came through to lap them.

And although Massa swiftly got out of the way, Gutierrez was less cooperative – which earned criticism from Wolff.

"Gutierrez at least makes it the same for everybody, he doesn't let anybody overtake," said Wolff, referring to previous criticisms that Gutierrez has received.

"Honestly, we need to say there is a fight for a race win going on between two guys fighting for every tenth, and then you have one guy cruising around and interfering in the race and it happens to always be the same guy!

"We were shouting to Charlie [Whiting, F1 race director]. Felipe went out of the way and Esteban, who is a lovely boy, continued to cruise out there and was enjoying the gap he had made to Felipe."

Red Bull view

Although the time lost behind Gutierrez also stalled Ricciardo's challenge on Rosberg, Red Bull boss Christian Horner did not think it made the difference to the overall result.

Ricciardo produced a stunning charge in the closing laps of the Singapore race after switching to fresh tyres. He swiftly slashed a near 30-second deficit but just fell short to cross the finish line just 0.4 seconds behind.

"Nico had a very strong weekend, a bit too much for us in qualifying," said Horner. "In the race we tried everything we could. We tried a different strategy at the end of the race that forced them to stick to the two-stop.

"While Daniel did a fantastic job to close Nico down in the last laps, they'd just left enough in hand to keep a margin to the flag. To get within half a second after 2 hours was a great performance. But today it just wasn't quite enough."

When asked if the traffic had cost Ricciardo, Horner said: "Not really. [Esteban] Gutierrez cost Nico, and we picked up DRS, so what we lost we gained.

"It probably cost Rosberg a bit more than us. And even if we'd stopped a lap earlier on the tyre, they were right at their limit because Daniel had taken a lot out of them.

"That was as close as we could get. It made an exciting finish and it was great to be putting them under a bit of pressure."