Will we see the Silver Arrow winning smile again soon? After the start of the Formula 1 season, which was catastrophic for its standards, Mercedes has recently made up ground again. But the racing team is still only the third force. Not enough for a perfectionist and pusher like Toto Wolff. In the RTL/ntv interview, the Mercedes team boss hopes that his team will soon be able to win again.
Times have changed: last year Mercedes was the measure of all things in many races, until the last race, literally up to the last corner, Lewis Hamilton was within reach of the eighth title.
What followed is well known. New rules came into force, a new era began. And, you have to put it this way: Mercedes messed up the start badly. At first, the worse times in the tests and the murmurs from the Mercedes camp were dismissed as the traditional understatement of the champions. But at the start of the season and the races that followed, the new pecking order manifested itself. Mercedes is no longer the industry leader. Instead, Red Bull is now fighting with the reinvigorated Scuderia Ferrari for the crown of the motorsport premier class.
Key found or key lost?
Mercedes only has the role as number three. A hard cut for a team that starts with the self-image of a serial winner. A third place in the race would have been almost equivalent to a failure in 2021, currently it is the maximum upwards. Again and again the team struggled with porpoising or bouncing at the beginning of the season. The racers were shaken, negative highlight: Lewis Hamilton crawled out of the racer after the Azerbaijan GP. Since then, bouncing has only been a minor problem. George Russell already said that the key to understanding the car had finally been found.
But the racing team still doesn’t fully understand the car. Toto Wolff laughs in the RTL/ntv interview: The key was lost in the grass a few times, he jokes with reference to the Russell analysis. “Now we have to look for him again.”
The main problem, however, is that the Silver Arrows still have the racing pace, but they are competitive, also to be up there with the front runners. Only on a fast lap, i.e. in qualifying, did Hamilton and Russell continue to lose ground compared to Red Bull and Ferrari. The calculation is simple: If you start from the back in the race, it will be much more difficult to drive to the front. “I think we’re almost there in race pace, that is, what we can do on Sunday, if not even as fast in some races. But we’re just still missing it on the individual laps,” says team boss Wolff.
The trend is upwards – soon there will be more than P3?
Access Russell proved in the first nine races that you can still consistently finish in the top 5 with the material you have. It wasn’t until Silverstone that he missed out on the top five places for the first time this season after his crash with Guanyu Zhou. The trend barometer is pointing upwards for teammate Hamilton. Three podiums in a row. As I said: currently the maximum.
With a major update before the home game in Silverstone, Mercedes was suddenly considered the secret favorite again. The packages in Barcelona and England did indeed push the team forward. And if it hadn’t been for the safety car period towards the end of the race, who knows if Lewis Hamilton wouldn’t even have won his home Grand Prix.
Nevertheless, the performance of the W13, which will not go down in the history books as a winning car, is too inconsistent. Wolff knows that too. “We had good races again. We were really there in terms of pace, but it’s just a constant up and down.” The following week in Spielberg, Mercedes again had no chance against Ferrari. Mercedes also has new parts at the start for the French GP – for example a new nose. The team promises another push to collect more tenths.
Again upgrades in France
Wolff is therefore setting high goals for the remaining races. “We want to be able to win again. Whether you win or not is another question, but we certainly came to France with great anticipation.”
For the second half of the season, the expectation is “to win races”, however many “whatever”. The team would like to go into the winter break with the knowledge “that we simply understood this car. With the knowledge that we are there in terms of pace and then simply have to do a good job over the winter in order to be part again next year of fun to be ahead.”
But it’s not that far yet. After Friday, it seems more than questionable that George Russell and Lewis Hamilton will be fighting for victory in Le Castellet on their own. In training, almost a second was missing from the Ferrari best time.
No stupid pill swallowed
According to the Austrian, it doesn’t matter which of his two pilots will win in the future. “Both deserve to win,” says Wolff. Russell had to wait a long time after his apprenticeship at Williams, according to Wolff. “And of course Lewis deserves the wins, he’s worked incredibly hard this year and I’m convinced that both will win again. (…). Whoever it is, I’m happy for both of them.”
The Mercedes man rules out one thing: there will be no stable order. The pilots are “racing against each other,” he emphasizes. “We also let them race against each other. There’s no heckling from the pit wall. We certainly won’t intervene, especially if we’re not fighting for the championship.”
Just the prospect of going for a race win at all would be satisfying. Eleven races are still time. And the potential is there. The team boss clarifies this with an impressive image: “We are the third force. I would say it’s not embarrassing, but it’s not like that’s our claim. And now you just have to face yourself with calmness and ambition, with drive and intelligence work our way out of this hole and we can. (…) It’s not like we’ve swallowed a stupid pill.”
Emmanuel Schneider