Mercedes’ Bradley Lord has revealed that, in hindsight, the team’s handling of the aftermath of the events of the 2021 British Grand Prix was something they’d change.

A collision between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone in 2021 proved one of the most divisive incidents of a particularly tense championship battle.

Mercedes on Silverstone 2021: ‘We could have handled it differently’

Fighting for that year’s world championship, Verstappen and Hamilton had been battling for the lead of the 2021 British Grand Prix on the opening lap.

A thrilling wheel-to-wheel battle continued around Brooklands, Luffield, and Woodcote, before the pair went, side-by-side, into Copse. The two cars made contact at the apex with Verstappen, taking an outside line with Hamilton’s nose on the inside, pitched off into the gravel, and slamming, sideways, into the barriers.

Verstappen was able to climb out of the car but was taken to hospital via helicopter for precautionary checks following the 51G impact. The Dutch driver escaped serious injury, although Red Bull team boss Christian Horner later revealed his driver had been briefly knocked out.

Last year, Verstappen revealed he had suffered some vision problems while driving at high speed in that year’s United States Grand Prix, suggesting his Silverstone impact was the culprit.

For Mercedes, Verstappen’s retirement from the race presented a huge opportunity to maximise Hamilton’s position in the championship.

Having suffered some damage in the collision, the resulting red flag allowed Mercedes to make the necessary repairs and, despite being given a time penalty after being found predominantly at fault for the collision, Hamilton was able to recover the deficit to come back and win.

However, the victory did little to calm tensions with Red Bull. Both Horner and Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko were angered by what they perceived as a lack of concern from Mercedes as the team, with Hamilton, celebrated with jubilation.

Red Bull would go on to request a right of review into the incident, which was dismissed by the stewards, with Mercedes responding with a statement to condemn Red Bull’s questioning of Hamilton’s sporting integrity.

“We hope that this decision will mark the end of a concerted attempt by the senior management of Red Bull Racing to tarnish the good name and sporting integrity of Lewis Hamilton,” Mercedes’ statement read.

The collision, and the aftermath, proved one of the major flashpoints of the season – both between Verstappen and Hamilton, as well as increasing the ill feeling between Red Bull and Mercedes.

Those tensions have eased in the three and a half years since that day at Silverstone, but Mercedes’ chief communications officer and team representative Bradley Lord has revealed how the team’s reaction was, regrettably, shaped according to the word of a Red Bull staff member.

“If we were to talk something we regret, I think, having taken the word of a member of the Red Bull team – and therefore taken a little for granted – Max’s condition after his shunt at Silverstone in 2021,” Lord told PlanetF1.com in an exclusive and far-reaching interview about his role – Lord having joined Mercedes in 2011.

“I think how we were perceived to handle that aftermath was a point at which that relationship in that season soured quite dramatically.

“We could have handled that in a different way that would have been more reflective of the concern we had for Max’s well-being at that point in time, regardless of our view of the incident and the rights and wrongs of it.”

With the tensions between the two sides, and the corresponding fanbases, increasing in the aftermath, Lord explained that Mercedes could have handled it better had the team not taken that initial information at face value.

“There was that side of things, and then to have, albeit unintentionally, antagonised the relationship, and the relationship with the fan bases in quite an extreme a way as it happened,” he said.

“That’s probably the moment. If we could go back in time and change it, I think we would change our responses and what we did at that point in time, around that afternoon.”

Bradley Lord: Intense moments like Abu Dhabi 2021 and Nico Rosberg’s retirement are most memorable

Lord, in his role as a trusted lieutenant of Toto Wolff as well as overseeing the communications strategies of the Mercedes team, has been with the Brackley-based squad through thick and thin and at the heart of some of the most important moments in the team’s recent history.

But, while sporting achievements on track are easy to quantify, what does Lord look back on as being standout moments? After all, how does one define a professional ‘win’ for a communications team?

Lord said the most memorable moments in his role are, unusually, often linked to the tougher times on track.

“I think the most interesting times are when the s**t is hitting the fan and you’re trying to deal with the big adrenaline moments and, sometimes, the big crisis,” he said.

“I’ve been very, very fortunate in my career not to be part of a team that’s had to manage the worst situation that you can face in F1, which is a very serious injury or fatality. Knock on wood, I very much hope never to have to do that either.

“But when I talk crisis, it’s the big incidents going against us, or big political controversies – those are super intense, and, because of that pressure, are always incredibly rewarding moments.

“Thinking back to the tyre test that we did in 2013, and then the sort of FIA fall-out of that, that was an exhilarating few days and process to be part of.”

Referring to the now infamous aftermath of the championship finale in Abu Dhabi in 2021, Lord said that – as well as the shock departure of Nico Rosberg after the same race in 2016 – also featured in his professional highlights reel.

“I look back on Abu Dhabi 2021 and how we handled the aftermath of that and, actually, the decision to say nothing and to not communicate was, hopefully, a powerful and elegant way to handle such a difficult situation where no words would have been sufficient to express how we were feeling,” he said.

“Another highlight was Nico’s [Rosberg] retirement. Being in a room where you knew a bombshell was about to land and no one in the room had a clue that it was coming.

“That was a really memorable moment. It’s rare in our sport that you have a story that doesn’t leak beforehand. That was one of the few occasions where we had something that hadn’t gone anywhere, and when he announced his retirement, that was a real shock for those in the room, without it being telegraphed beforehand in any way.

“So that was an interesting thing to observe and to be part of. Crafting those press releases late the night before, after he told us that news – that was a fun time as well.”

The full interview with Bradley Lord, Mercedes’ chief communications officer and team representative, will be published on PlanetF1.com later this week.