Toto Wolff reckons Mercedes got off to a bad start in the F1 2022 era and no matter how much they tried to solve one issue, they only put itself in another one.
Having dominated the proceedings since 2014, Mercedes eventually faltered a bit in 2021 and it followed on in 2022 and beyond. The engine difference didn’t matter by the end of the cycle when Red Bull and Honda managed to get things in place to help Max Verstappen win in 2021.
The subsequent change in 2022 only solidified Red Bull’s pace together with Honda, for it dominate for two seasons. For Mercedes, it went into a spiral. It didn’t get things right from the start in 2022 and no matter how much they tried to solve one problem, it threw another one in their face.
They fell in a trap of theories which didn’t solve any of their issues when the likes of McLaren and Red Bull managed to get it right. Mercedes faced too many inconsistencies and they couldn’t itself out of it. Eventually, it was an era where they failed and just about to keep itself in the top half.
In some ways, ending up second in F1 2025 was victory of sorts, but not even Wolff is sure how they managed to do it. “Yeah, it shows that these cars are still not very clear to us because we come off the back of some really good weekends,” he said to media. “Qatar wasn’t too bad and you could see a similar problem on the front. In Abu Dhabi, we just couldn’t turn the car in nine and in one because the front right was suffering so much.
“That’s why I personally and I think as a team collectively, we’re happy that this ground effect era ends and we’re embarking on something new. Yeah, we failed to win a world championship, but it was a P2, P3, P4, P2. That’s not like a complete failure. When you look at those stats set before in 20 years it looks like solid and respectable, but obviously now and in the moment there’s nothing to be happy about because there’s always been a team that was far ahead in all of those four years.
“So what was the reason? I think that we got off to a wrong start at the beginning, tried to solve problem by problem and whilst peeling off and sorting out those problems, new problems occurred and we were never able to correlate, understand. We had false dawns and lots of kind of theories, but never one that would give us an edge to fight for a world championship and then our competitors have just done a better job.
“I mean you look at McLaren, how they turned the car around three years ago and then you look at also Red Bull who had ups and downs, but what has happened since the summer is clearly an understanding or at least an example of how you can find out of what’s not working in turning a campaign around massively and we have actually never been able to do that in four years,” summed up Wolff.
Here’s Mercedes paying goodbye to old power units
