So far, the impression has been that Lewis Hamilton’s disqualification in Austin on Sunday came as quite a surprise to Mercedes. But Toto Wolff has now admitted that they already suspected that there might be a problem.
The team boss explains to “Sky”: “The problem with the sprint races is that the car goes into parc ferme and you can no longer adjust it. On Saturday we thought that it could be at the limit – but maybe with a little bit of room .”
“But we had a new underbody and more downforce. In the sprint race we probably didn’t do as many laps without DRS, which meant the underbody touched down even more. It didn’t fit,” admits the Austrian.
Nevertheless, it is exciting that Mercedes already saw the first signs that they might have a problem, at least after the sprint. Technical director James Allison had previously explained: “When we did our set-up, we checked the plank and everything looked good.”
Wolff: We would make the same decision again
But that was already on Friday, after which the car was no longer allowed to be modified. When we realized on Saturday that things could get tight, it was already too late. If the cars had been touched again, the drivers would have had to start from the pit lane.
Haas and Aston Martin chose this path on Sunday. But Wolff explains that the cases are not comparable. “The cars coming out of the parc ferme [geholt wurden]were either way too stiff […] or they wanted to rebuild the entire set-up like at Aston Martin,” he emphasizes.
The affected cars were “slow,” and “that wasn’t the case for us,” recalls Wolff. That’s why he makes it clear: “I would do it like that again and accept the disqualification because we couldn’t manage it.”
“I would rather take a disqualification, where you are fighting for the race win and see the performance, than a third place 25 seconds behind. I would always take the disqualification,” explains the Mercedes team boss.
Looking back, he would make the same decision again and not take both cars out of the parc ferme. Also exciting: Wolff shares Hamilton’s assessment that there were probably significantly more cars on the road illegally last Sunday.
New underbody in Austin: More downforce, but …
“Yes, we got this feedback from the other teams. The drivers of course talk to each other, and also at a management level [redet man]. I think that very, very many teams were probably under the nine millimeters,” said Wolff.
However, they were not disqualified – because they were simply not examined. The underbody of only four of the 20 cars was checked on Sunday. The problem is, by the way, “absolutely [strecken]”specific,” said Wolff, “also because of the sprint weekend.”
In other words, the case should not be repeated in Mexico this weekend “now that we have the data.” In the USA, Mercedes recently also had a new underbody, which, according to Toto Wolff, also “played a role”.
“We had more downforce, which is positive. But that means the car touches down a little more on the bumps,” he explains, recalling that this is “the most important thing” in terms of performance in the current Formula 1 cars to drive as deep as possible.
“I think with every millimeter you can find a lot of performance in these ground effect cars,” said Wolff. And in Austin, Mercedes probably just overdid it a bit in this regard.