After the qualifying debacle of Formula 1 record world champion Lewis Hamilton in Jeddah, Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff took his team to court.
“The performance we are showing is unacceptable,” said the 50-year-old on the sidelines of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
He’s “not worried,” said Wolff in his media round, “but realistically you can’t turn eight or nine tenths down in one lap in a week.” But he knows “that we can and will shoot it – because we simply have to.”
Hamilton, who has set pole 103 times, failed in the first qualifying session on Saturday for the first time since November 2017. This drove Wolff up the wall.
Mercedes dared to experiment with Hamilton
“With Lewis we tried an experiment that caught our eye. We could have saved ourselves that,” he said on “Sky”. This made the car “undriveable”, Hamilton only finished 16th.
“But above all we lack the pace. We’re somewhere in no man’s land. It’s time to wake up,” demanded Wolff, who was at least satisfied with sixth place for George Russell.
Wolff as well as Hamilton indicated that they would make extensive modifications to the setup of the Mercedes with the starting number 44. This would mean that Hamilton would have to start the second race of the season on Sunday (7:00 p.m. CEST/Sky) from the pit lane.
Series world champion Mercedes was only third behind Ferrari and Red Bull at the start of the season in Bahrain last week. In Sakhir, however, the team benefited from the technical failures of the Red Bulls of world champion Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez, with Hamilton finishing third and Russell fourth.