Toto Wolff says the 2021 F1 loss certainly feels bad than the 2022 shortcomings since last year they had a title-winning car.
Mercedes has had two different F1 seasons in 2021 and 2022. Last year, they won the constructors’ championship and lost the drivers’ title in different circumstances but this year, they were never in the picture to win either of the championships.
This is one big reason why Wolff feels that the loss in 2021 will always hurt more than 2022 because this year they knew that they did not have the car to challenge. They had a strong season last year which wasn’t the case this year where Red Bull and Ferrari were ahead.
That’s why Wolff notes that the emotions in 2021 were different to 2022. “Last year, without any doubt because last year was strong and how it ended because within a couple of seconds we knew that’s it and its out of control, out of your hands and losing control it was the first time since I was an adolescent and in my sense of fairness that was totally against the values,” said Wolff to media.
“This year was not as peaky in terms of the emotions because we knew from the beginning the car was not good enough and I think we understood slowly but surely, you peel one layer of the onion and you think you have solved the problem and there is the next one and the next one and then we started to correlate where this car was not a good one where it could perform on these tracks knowing that the more difficult ones like Abu Dhabi were damage limitation.
“We knew we got it wrong. We are conscious that others did a better job and this is an absolute disappointment how this season panned out. So that is ok,” summed up Wolff. When asked if it was similar with Lewis Hamilton, he was affirmative that the Brit did all what he did this year despite the 2021 happening but they didn’t have the car.
“Last year was much worse as the situation was just one event,” said Wolff. “This year was the whole season and we lost it on merit. We just weren’t good enough and I think that for Lewis, he has been really good this year. You can expect a world champion who has had a title taken away from him come in and just try to smash everybody but we did not give him a good enough car to do that.
“He has held us up at times when the energy level was down in the briefing room on days when it was difficult for him but that particular record I don’t think it matters a lot. It is more about helping to set the sails for next season, the partnership with George was really good to get to develop the car and for me knowing him for 10 years from a personal side, exceptional . Better than all the performance he had in the car, his attitude and mind set this year was outstanding,” summed up Wolff.
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