David Coulthard took aim at Toto Wolff for his words after the Bahrain Grand Prix which the Scot says would have been "a big kick in the whatnots" for Mercedes staff.
The Bahrain race was not a success for the Silver Arrows despite their hopes of being more competitive this year. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished fifth and seventh respectively, with the former admitting after the race that even that result flattered his team.
Wolff was similarly blunt, stating after qualifying: "I don't think that this package is going to be competitive eventually. We gave it our best go last year, also over the winter, and now we all just need to regroup, sit down with the engineers, be totally non-dogmatic, ask what is the development direction we want to pursue in order to be able to win races.
"I'm looking at what we can find next week, what we can add to the car, what is the change of direction that we can implement and how quickly can we do that, and maybe we can turn the ship around this year. But it needs a lot to change the pecking order."
And, clearly hurting after the race itself, he declared that it was "one of the worst days in racing" that he had ever experienced. The Austrian added: "We are lacking pace front, right and centre. That is a reflection of the test." He also reaffirmed his belief that the concept of the car needs to be changed.
But that, in the eyes of former Red Bull and McLaren driver Coulthard, was a pretty "brutal" assessment of the situation. He told Channel 4 : "This car has only been alive for six days, a few days of testing, three days here. I don't know where he's coming from with that.
"But yeah, they've got a completely different strategy with the sidepods. They clearly have to try and follow the pack now. But that is like a big kick in the whatnots for a design team."
Meanwhile, former Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg holds the rather concerning opinion that his old team still might not know exactly why the car isn't working as hoped. The 2016 champion said: "Toto Wolff said that this concept won't go any further – that's a big statement. You have to take a step back this year and then start with the new concept already preparing for the new year.
"I don't want to be in those shoes. The problem is you can't just put new sidepods on it and then it works. The whole car is in a river. The whole car has to change... They have to find the miracle weapon and make great progress quickly, but they don't really understand it themselves and that's the difficult part."
