Toto Wolff is very disappointed with the bad weekend that Mercedes had in Brazil. The team boss calls it, in his opinion, one of the worst race weekends he has ever experienced in years. Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton finished eighth, while his teammate, George Russell, had to park the car halfway through the race.
Wolff acknowledges that the Mercedes car has been unpredictable all season when it comes to performance. ‘Into the fluctuations performance are there,” he told Motorsport.com. However, Wolff does not think what happened to the team this weekend was normal. “Those swings shouldn’t go from almost the fastest to wherever we ended up this race,” he adds irritably.
‘Worst weekend in thirteen years’
The Mercedes team boss is anything but happy after the results in Brazil. “For me personally, the worst weekend in thirteen years,” he admits. ‘I’m completely baffled. This is unacceptable for all of us. We are a well-structured, solid team and this did not look like a solid team,” says the team boss with a critical note towards the team.
Things seemed to be going better at Mercedes in recent weeks, and the two drivers seemed happy with the upgrades the team had brought. Wolff acknowledges the progress the team has made, but does not understand where it has gone. ‘Within three consecutive races you finish in a strong second place. We challenged Max (Verstappen, ed) several times in a row, and a week later you end up nowhere. I think this is simply not possible,” said the team boss.
Where does this poor performance come from?
But why did Mercedes perform so poorly last weekend? Wolff himself cannot fully understand it. ‘It’s mind-boggling. From a really fast car, the best balanced yet and drivers are happy, to a nightmare. How is that possible?’, he says. According to the team boss, it is not a fault with the car, but a bigger problem. ‘There is something fundamentally wrong mechanically. It’s not a rear wing and it’s not that the car is set too high, because we’re talking about a millimeter or two. That is performance, but that is not the explanation for a total failure.’
For now, the team boss looks forward to the future and how the team can solve this problem. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we analyze the cars over the next few days and we find out there was a mechanical problem in the way we set them up or something like that. But I don’t know what it will be,” Wolff said.
