Mercedes believes they had the quickest car of all in the recently concluded Formula 1 triple header, even though it didn’t score as many points they would have liked to.
The German manufacturer scored 61 points between their two drivers – the least among the Top 3 teams with Ferrari scoring 98 and Red Bull Racing 65 in the three back-to-back F1 races in France, Austria and Britain.
One of the key reasons for Mercedes to falter was the double DNF in Austria, while Lap 1 hits in France and Britain to Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton by Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen, meant it couldn’t score well as expected.
Not only Hamilton lost his championship lead, but even Mercedes are now 20 points behind Ferrari in the constructors’ fight. Despite them scoring the least points for various reasons, and admitting to the mistakes, Toto Wolff reckons Mercedes had the quickest car.
“We didn’t score as many points in the triple-header as we had hoped for,” he said. “A lot of that was down to our own mistakes. However, there is a silver lining to this – while we didn’t maximise on points, we did bring the quickest car to all three races.
“Hockenheim will mark the halfway point of the 2018 season. We’ve had a decent first half – on the one hand, we’ve left points on the table and had to do damage limitation more often than we would have wanted.
“On the other hand, we still scored a good amount of points, both drivers have shown strong performances and we have a fast car. So, there are many reasons why we’re looking forward to the second half of the 2018 season; we’re hungry, ambitious and want to kick on from here.
“[As for the next race in Germany] the track [Hockenheim] itself is quite interesting; it has a variety of corner speeds and will test every aspect of the car. We will fight hard to not only put on a good show for our friends and fans in Hockenheim, but also get the result that they will be hoping for,” he added.
