This is the third year that Mercedes has failed to build a decent car. Until recently, the team dominated, but now leader Toto Wolff sees no reason for optimism…
Toto Wolff: “I would be lying if I said I was optimistic that I could find something positive in this situation.
We must ask ourselves, “What is the reason? Why isn’t anything working for us?” You must always look for the answer within yourself, because it is people who make decisions. That’s why we can’t give up.
We don’t have enough speed. Sometimes we look normal in direct comparison. Not as good as we would like, but sometimes we show good lap times. As the weekend goes on, in some sessions it feels like we are ready to fight, but then it disappears. In the third training session we are only one tenth behind, but in qualifying we are already seven tenths behind.
We don’t understand some aspects of our machine’s behavior that we always understood in the past. At the same time, our rivals are making rapid progress. A year ago the McLaren drivers were 17th, 18th or 19th at this stage of the season, and now they are 40 seconds ahead of us.
We are very angry, but we understand that if we do everything right at some point, we can gain a lot back at once. We must continue to believe in this, even though it is very difficult now.
We checked some possible reasons and found that they are not the problem. But we have a fundamental problem: the wind tunnel does not correlate with what happens on the track.
We are open to any decision; there is no dogma that we adhere to. We have an open discussion, but the problem is that we don’t know where the mistake is. It’s like a switch that sometimes turns on and sometimes doesn’t.”
Source: F1 News

I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.