Toto Wolff reckons a ‘perfection’ record is what is more impressive to him than individual F1 driver records that Max Verstappen attained in Italian GP.
Red Bull’s Verstappen became the first driver in F1 history to win 10 consecutive races in this weekend’s Italian GP at Monza, beating the previous record held by Sebastain Vettel of nine wins. It is no easy feat for anyone despite the ongoing domination.
Any slip-up in a grand prix can result in a non-finish or a finish outside the top spot to deny anyone from setting or creating new records. Every domination period results in some kind of record with the most notable being Lewis Hamilton equalling Michael Schumacher’s.
He almost created a new one in 2021 but for Verstappen to take it away but even equalling the seven championships record is a big call for Hamilton and Mercedes. But team boss Wolff is not too keen on such records of 10 consecutive wins.
“Our situation was a little bit different because we had two guys fighting against each other within the team,” Wolff told Sky Sports when asked about it. “I don’t know whether he cares about the record, it’s not something that would be important for me, any of those numbers. It’s for Wikipedia, nobody reads that anyway.”
When pressed on about it again by the written media, Wolff somewhat clarified his stance noting that such records were irrelevant to him in the Mercedes dominance days too. But that doesn’t mean he is putting down Verstappen’s greatness.
“We just talked about it,” said Wolff. “For me these kinds of records are completely irrelevant, they were irrelevant in our good days in Mercedes. I don’t know how many races we won in a row, I didn’t even know that there was a count of how many races you win, therefore asking me for commenting on some achievement is difficult because it never played a role in my whole life.
“But the result itself shows that a great driver in a great car are competing on an extremely high level,” summed up Wolff, who further stated that if Red Bull go on to win every grand prix this year, that ‘perfection’ is something good to talk about. He recalls the 2016 season when they missed the perfection by two races.
“I think Red Bull need to screw it up themselves in order not to win every race this season,” said Wolff. “And that by the way, that’s a record I would think that’s a good one…because that is perfection. We didn’t make it because our two pushed each other out in Barcelona 2016 and then we had an engine failure in Malaysia.”
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