Toto Wolff conceded that Mercedes has lost “quite a chunk” of performance since the summer break, following another lacklustre showing at the Italian Grand Prix.
After winning three of the last four races before the summer break, Mercedes faced a harsh reality check at the first post-break round in the Netherlands, where their drivers finished a distant seventh and eighth.
Much like in Zandvoort, the practice sessions in the lead up to the Italian Grand Prix—particularly Saturday’s FP3, where Lewis Hamilton was fastest from George Russell—suggested Mercedes might be competitive around Monza.
However, Hamilton was left disappointed after his qualifying effort resulted in only the sixth best time. Russell managed to secure third, just behind the McLaren duo, but failed to capitalise as he stumbled at the start, losing positions and picking up front wing damage that forced him into an early stop. Fifth for Hamilton and seventh for Russell was ultimately the best Mercedes could do on Sunday, with both drivers feeling they didn’t have the pace to challenge.
“I think, first of all, you need to congratulate Ferrari,” Wolff said after the race. “If you can choose a winner for the Monza Grand Prix, that’s Ferrari. It’s good for Formula One—good for the show, good for entertainment, good for revenue.”
The team boss acknowledged that Mercedes’s performance in Italy was an improvement over their outing in the Netherlands, but admitted the team has lost the momentum they had before the summer break.
“It was better than Zandvoort, but we are quite a chunk from pre-summer performances, where I think we scored the podium in five races or six races, and three victories, two on merit. And we don’t seem to be playing there at the moment in the front,” Wolff said.
“And when you’re on the back foot pace-wise, then obviously, you’re in a bit of a no-man’s land in terms of strategy. So it’s good that we have a little bit of time to analyse that.”
Prior to the race, Charles Leclerc accurately predicted that tyre management would determine the outcome of Sunday’s event. Indeed, Leclerc’s Monza masterclass secured him the victory, with the Monégasque expertly managing his hard tyres for an impressive 38 laps.
Russell delivered a similar race-winning performance at the Belgian Grand Prix with a one-stop strategy before being disqualified as his car was found to be underweight.
Now, post-summer break, Wolff has identified tyre management as one of Mercedes’s key weaknesses, complicated by balance issues.
“I think we are able to extract a single lap, which is, in principle, good news,” he explained. “But then the balance isn’t, in a way, good enough to keep the tyres happy for the race. And that’s been a little bit the topic since Zandvoort. It’s been more on the edge, more difficult to find the right balance.”
He added: “We suffered from graining too, front left graining. I think it came at various times. With George, the graining started a bit early on stint one, and then we were very defensive in our lap times. In the second stint, in order to maybe extract more tyre performance, maybe to make a one-stop last, but then the graining came up, but it was so easy to get it wrong.
“As a driver, it’s very difficult to judge, can you make it to the end or not? Because you see the front is opening up, or the front is starting to grain. Yeah, graining was an issue.”
Wolff also gave his verdict on the scrap between Russell and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez—a tussle that Russell thought was a little too close for comfort, remarking that Perez’s defensive manoeuvres were “right at the very, very limit.”
“I think that was…I’m trying to be objective, and with the George incident on Turn 1, it’s probably racing that can happen,” Wolff said. “But with Checo, that was a move under braking. Was there enough gap, when the gap was tiny? But still, the move came late.”
