“This is the real challenge, and for me an interesting one. As painful as it is today.”
Toto Wolff opened up about the struggles faced by Mercedes during the start of the season.
At the turn of the championship it seems that the team has a lot of work to do before being able to step back onto the top of the podium. And Wolff is firm in his goals and the work that needs to be done to get back into the Championship fight.
“When you look at where we were at the end of the season, we caught up a lot. It’s just a metter of which circuits suited us and which not. I think we’ve almost doubled, if not tripled the gap to Red Bull and this is what we need to do to look that.”
“With us, everything’s bad. The single-lap pace was still good but in the race we saw the consequences. To put it bluntly, it’s just we were lacking downforce and when you’re lacking downforce you’re sliding the tyres, and when you’re sliding the tyres you’re going backwards.”
“We opted to stay with the low downforce wing, of course high downforce wing would have helped us with the tyre. We took a decision and we stand fully by that decision. I don’t think we could’ve held the Aston Martins today, in any case.”
The Team Principal’s plans for future developments are clear: develop a car to find the best way forward.
“The starting base is very different where we are today. We have lost a year in development and in order to have a steeper development curve you just need to take these decisions. Aston Matin took that decision and they came back strong.
“If we start from our base, maybe we can come back strong and chase the Red Bulls, that’s the ambition.
“We’ve looked at other ideas and haven’t stood still. And that’s not only since two weeks when we saw that we haven’t been able to close the gap, but we’ve done it since arrived. Just to be open minded. Still an emphasis on making this work. But we’ve already looked at different concepts.
“I don’t think we’re constrained by the budget cap. We just need to decide where we want development directions to go and put all our efforts into it. We’re not gonna develop two cars side by side, we’re gonna develop one car and we will decide that in the next days and weeks which car it will be.
“It’s difficult to catch such an advantage but it’s what we need to do, we have no choice.
“I’m not sure that budget cap keeps you really constrained. We just need to decide which direction we are going and pull all the resources behind it. You’re still developing one car, the question is only ‘which car?’.”
The Mercedes team is focused on the steps it needs to take to get back on the winning track, including the drivers.
“As a matter of fact the gap is very big and in order to catch up we need to make big steps. The drivers are fully aware. Everyone is aware this is not a matter of finding three-tenths and polishing the car up. This is a matter of serious performance that we need to find to put us back into a situation to fight for race wins and the championship.
“We just need to dig deeper than we’ve ever done and provide both drivers a car that they want to fight with.”
“The gap is very big, and in order to catch up we need to make big steps.”
Photo: @MercedesAMGF1
