“Do we know why we were so far ahead of everyone else this weekend? We don’t know that,” commented team boss Toto Wolff on Mercedes’ double success at the Brazilian Grand Prix. George Russell dominated the field from the front, Lewis Hamilton took second place despite an early crash.
The competition was unable to jeopardize the first Mercedes double victory since Imola 2020 and attested to the team simply having the fastest car in Brazil. But when asked in which areas it was particularly strong, Hamilton himself had no answer: “I don’t know, to be honest.”
“It’s a strange feeling because we’ve definitely made a step forward. But it’s almost as if the others have let up a bit this weekend – maybe?” the Briton muses on the balance of power in Interlagos.
Hamilton: “Huge boost for morale”
“I don’t know. But the car has been really great to drive all weekend – very consistent, very smooth, no major issues. And yes, we didn’t bring any upgrades for the last race or this one. I think we did slowly starting to understand the car more and more.”
Achieving this form right now before the winter break is extremely important for the team, Hamilton emphasizes: “It’s a huge boost for morale. Before the winter break, the team knows that we’re on the right track, and we still are the best team”, he praises the fighting spirit at Mercedes.
His teammate Russell believes: If you went back to the start with the car as it is now and started at the season opener in Bahrain, you would be “definitely well over a second” faster. “I think I qualified ninth in Bahrain. At Imola, Lewis and I were out in Q2.”
“Porpoising” was taking up too much of the team’s time
“At the start of the season we struggled with Alfa Romeo and Haas and at times we were well over a second behind Ferrari who seemed to be the dominant team at that point. I think that shows the progress we’ve made.”
“We lost a lot of time trying to find a solution for the porpoising. That really affected our development. I think that’s also why we’ve seen such a jump in performance in the last eight races. We were able to focus from Put porpoising on the performance.”