Mercedes Head of Motorsport Toto Wolff is surprised at the big drop in performance after the double victory at Spa and cannot explain the regression
Toto Wolff gets to the heart of the matter: “We’ve totally missed the mark,” the Mercedes Head of Motorsport summarizes the race of his Silver Arrows in Zandvoort to Sky. Not much went right for Mercedes on Sunday in the Netherlands. They only finished seventh and eighth behind the other three top teams
This is surprising in that the last race before the summer break saw a one-two finish before George Russell was dropped from the rankings. In addition, the team’s podium streak came to an end, having previously finished on the podium six times in a row. But nothing worked at Zandvoort.
“The car was never in a good position,” the team boss complained. “You can’t come first and second from a Spa weekend three weeks ago and then suddenly finish seventh and eighth.”
However, Wolff defends his drivers, who he says are not responsible for the drop in performance: “I think we took a wrong turn with what we did to the car mechanically and aerodynamically,” he says. Mercedes now wants to analyze this in the week leading up to Monza
Russell thought he was on course for a podium
At first, things didn’t look too bad from a Mercedes perspective. George Russell had qualified fourth on the grid and even overtook Oscar Piastri at the start. “After the first few laps, I still thought we were on course for the podium,” said Russell. “I knew that overtaking would be difficult. “
Congrats @McLarenF1 MB power on the top step once again.
Looking forward to joining you on the podium again soon. pic.twitter.com/kIqwcdtJ9M
– Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) August 25, 2024
“But we just didn’t have the pace. I dropped like a stone, which was quite surprising, especially against Ferrari,” said the Briton. “We had expected to be comfortably ahead of them.” But that was not the case. “We clearly did something wrong with the tires,” he speculates.
“We had six strong races and suddenly we’re almost a minute behind the win. You don’t lose all your performance overnight,” says Russell. “We didn’t get something right today. But I don’t have an answer at the moment. “
Two stops as an emergency solution
Mercedes had to switch to two stops for its drivers – an “emergency solution” according to Wolff. “I don’t think we had much choice. Our degradation was really bad, and we could have clung to a tire that broke down completely so that we finished seventh and eighth. Or we could try two stops and maybe catch Perez or Sainz, which we didn’t manage in the end.”
“Whatever we would have done, it wouldn’t have worked because the car wasn’t good,” said Wolff.
LAP 40/72
See ya, George
P4 for Oscar! F1 DutchGP pic.twitter.com/m38FMeCegd
– Formula 1 (@F1) August 25, 2024
But the mystery is still: Why wasn’t it good? Was it simply the set-up? “I don’t know if it made that much difference,” says the Austrian. “You don’t make your car so much slower or faster with set-up. I think it’s more fundamental what parts we have on the car.”
“Sometimes these cars are a surprise box,” he says. “We’ve had six podiums in a row and the car doesn’t look like the one that was first and second three weeks ago,” said Wolff. “And you can’t have a result like that without a big factor playing a role. “
Wolff does not want to jump to conclusions
The short practice time with the new package on Friday probably didn’t help. Mercedes also had the new underbody on the car, which had been removed at Spa.
But Wolff says: “I don’t want to jump to conclusions too quickly. We’ll take a look at it over the next few days and hopefully find some clues in the data. Was it the set-up? Was it the track? What did we do wrong? Was it the underbody? Was it everything together? Hopefully we can sort it out by Monza and be competitive again. “
“This swing in performance between P1 and P2 and P7 and P8 – something is not right. That was not a simple set-up decision in my eyes,” he says.
The only Mercedes driver who was reasonably satisfied with the race was Lewis Hamilton. The seven-time world champion had only started the Grand Prix from 14th on the grid after a poor qualifying session and a penalty, but was able to drive his way up to eighth place
Only Hamilton had “a lot of fun ”
“I had a lot of fun today,” he says. Unlike Russell, Hamilton had already started with a planned two-stop strategy and had initially started on the soft tires. “We had no problems with the tires,” he claims.
“I tried to use up the tire, but I also wasn’t sure whether we might go for one stop,” he says. “If I had gone for a stop and managed the tire a bit better, I could have made it and maybe been one place better. “
But it wouldn’t have made any difference to Mercedes, because he would have been up against Russell, who finished five seconds ahead of Hamilton.
Hamilton’s problem in Zandvoort was simply that his qualifying was too bad. He is convinced that he could have achieved a much better result otherwise: “I think I had the pace today to finish in the top five,” he claims. “If I had started fourth, for example, I could have finished at least fourth.”
A dig at teammate Russell? Because he started from fourth place. At the finish, however, he was miles away from this position