Bottas collided with Williams rider Russell while battling for ninth place in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on Sunday, resulting in a serious crash that resulted in the race being red flagged.
Bottas and Russell quickly accused each other of causing the crash as they approached Turn 2, but the stewards thought it was a racing incident.
Mercedes team boss Wolff had to cope with a collision between Bottas and the Mercedes-related junior Russell, who believed that he had “a lot to learn”.
An immediate problem for Mercedes, however, is the impact of the crash damage on its development plan for 2021 and the move to 2022 given the cost of the crash in the first year of F1’s new cost cap.
When asked by Motorsport.com how he would deal with the situation, Wolff said the situation was “absolutely not amusing” for Mercedes as he believed it could cost the team planned upgrades in the fight against Red Bull.
“It’s a pretty big shunt,” said Wolff. “Our car is almost a write-down in a high cost environment that we certainly didn’t need, and it will likely limit the upgrades we can make.
“And just the fact that we ended up there by losing it in the wet because there was no contact, lost it in the wet and crashed both cars is not what I was expecting.
“The cost cap is very high and we have always feared that a car would be written off in full. This one isn’t going to be a total write-off, but almost, and that’s not something we really wanted. “
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Teams are only allowed to spend $ 145 million below the cost cap through the 2021 season, which means unexpected or unplanned costs for accidental damage are higher than in previous years.
Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes ‘s trackside technical director, said the team had yet to do a full analysis of the crash damage and rescue of Bottas’ car.
“It’s extensive and whether or not there is damage to the PSU side is one of the things we need to look carefully at,” said Shovlin.
“Because he didn’t finish the race, the transmission isn’t a problem. But the new factor for us this year is that we are all limited in costs. This type of damage is not really on target.
“Our drivers have been incredibly good at getting through the season without breaking much over the past few years, and certainly the bill will be huge in terms of carbon and metalwork.
“So we’re going to look at what we can actually save and get the cars back together for Portimao. But it’s pretty worrying when you have incidents like this. “
Shovlin explained how teams worked on the basis that parts would complete their expected life cycle before breaking.
“When you have a series of such major accidents that cause significant damage – and that was bad for us because we had a front wing with Lewis [Hamilton] also – then that will definitely exceed our allocation for what we have available for the parts, ”said Shovlin.
“In an ideal world, you bring it to life, you don’t break it, whatever you break, hopefully it’s the end of life or something that will soon be out of date.
“But that’s definitely not the case here. So it’s really a factor in the cost cap, and the money has to come from somewhere.
“When it finally becomes a big problem, it can start to strain your development budget. So we have to be aware of how things go from here. “
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