Although Lando Norris finished ahead of both Mercedes drivers, standing on the podium for the second time in a row, team principal Toto Wolff believes Mercedes was actually the second power in the race—but laments that they failed to capitalise on their pace.
Photo Credit: Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
“I think we had the second quickest car today, but the result doesn’t show it,” Wolff told the media after the race.
“You can say, in theory, we had the second quickest car, we didn’t monetise on it today, and that’s always disappointing.
“We’ve got to find out how we could’ve done that better. You can see that George came back from a long way down, beating the Aston Martins, beating the Ferraris, so we just need to analyse that.”
Asked what went wrong for Mercedes in Hungary, Wolff explained that he felt the team’s conservative tyre management ultimately cost his drivers a potential shot at the podium.
“I think we were too careful in bringing the tyres in, I think after the stops we lost a lot of time.
“It paid off towards the end of the stint, because we were miles quicker than everyone else, but it’s always a balance, and I believe the balance was a little bit too much when it comes to bringing them in.”
“To strike that balance right is really difficult, because you see if you are hammering them like Lando did, like Oscar did, or also Checo did, then at the end you’re just falling off massively.
So bringing them in when you can is definitely advantageous, but probably we’ve been too conservative and we lost too much time at the beginning.”
Wolff added that Verstappen was untouchable throughout the race, wryly comparing his advantage over the rest of the field to that of a Formula 1 car racing Formula 2 cars.
“As surprising as it sounds, in terms of pace, you see it was quick, in terms of the ‘rest of the world,’ in the F2 pack.”
Verstappen was indeed in a league of his own, comfortably leading from start to finish, and bringing home a record-breaking twelfth consecutive victory for Red Bull.
Asked whether Verstappen’s dominance will dent Formula 1’s widespread popularity, Wolff remarked that the desire to create a spectacle shouldn’t override meritocracy.
“We can talk each other up and say we could have been and would have been second… in a way that’s irrelevant because you have a car in front that was probably cruising a long time and that’s the bitter reality.
“But as I said before it’s a meritocracy, as long as you’re moving within the regulations, then you have overall done a better job, and we just need to acknowledge it.
“We need to calculate and say ‘what can we do better in the next race?’ and optimise from there.”
“Why I love this sport is that it is meritocratic. Entertainment follows sport, not the other way around.
“It is what it is; we’ve had these years with Mercedes where we’ve finished 1-2 every single race, and that was certainly not great for entertainment purposes.
“That’s why we just need to work better and get ourselves back into contention, because like many fans we have left frustrated from yesterday when you think we are very close together, keenly watching what happens today, and then you see one car disappear into the sunset.”
While Saturday’s qualifying session yielded many surprising results—including Hamilton’s first pole position since 2021 and both Alfa Romeos in the top ten—the race unfolded according to more realistic expectations.
Wolff said that the racing was quite close and competitive from second place downwards, which he took as a positive sign.
“I think that, when you look at the outcome at the end, how the field was, I don’t think it was so bad. I mean, we were four seconds behind Lando, two seconds behind [Checo] Perez, so that wouldn’t be a shocker. I think the gap to Max is just huge.”
Citing the recent successes of teams such as Aston Martin and McLaren, Wolff reiterated that Mercedes is committed to making a step forward.
“We just need to continue working and chipping away on understanding and unlocking our potential in the car as did Aston Martin over the winter or McLaren during the season. We won’t give up.”
Speaking about the team’s plans for 2024 and beyond, Wolff admitted, “I think that we need a lot of changes from 2024.
“The direction our team is developing is really quite interesting; we see opportunities and we’re not shying away from leaving no stone unturned, looking at every single concept that we’ve seen on other cars, whether that’s powerful or not, whether this is of any use for us without letting ourselves be distracted from the way we operate, the way we analyse…”
