Toto Wolff talks about the recent trend of Mercedes-powered cars getting better as he adds more on their situation when compared with McLaren.
The F1 British GP saw another Mercedes-powered car take centerstage with McLaren ending up on podium. This came after the rise of Aston Martin this year when the factory team has been struggling for various reasons on the car side than the engine.
Wolff is not sad with the results from Silverstone but happy that Mercedes-powered cars performed well on a track where power unit element is huge. Looking at how the two teams have gained performance, this does raises questions on Mercedes.
But Wolff reckons the work that Mercedes is doing, they are doing to be back fighting for race wins. The sidepod remains a major talking point and reading between the lines, Mercedes will certainly looking at the concepts that are doing better.
He pinpoints the diffuser as a big player too. He notes that McLaren had more windtunnel time from last year and so they could do the extra runs which Mercedes were limited by. They don’t have large set of updates, but they will continue bring small things.
Mercedes-powered car strong but not Mercedes –
Wolff: “We are keeping them in second position and whoever has performance that is track specific or through an upgrade, were able to just stay there at least. Now, we have the resurgence of McLaren who were not competitive at the beginning of the year. It’s good to see because that means if you’re taking the right decisions, your car can jump up by a huge amount. On the other side, I don’t know what happened to Aston Martin and Ferrari, who made a step backwards. Overall, this result is normal and solid. I’m happy for Lewis’ podium and both drivers drove to the maximum of the car. So P3/P5 is okay, and more than solid. It’s making me very proud because this is a very power sensitive track and the Mercedes engines performed really well.”
McLaren form encouraging –
Wolff: “Why it is exciting to see the McLaren bounce back it is fair enough to say that they had much more wind tunnel time. in any case this come with upgrades that change completely the performance of the car. We are not speaking about two tenths up and down, but we are speaking a second. That’s good for the sport when you do the right things or when you put 1+1 together. We have seen it with Aston Martin from year to year. We’ve seen it with the McLaren now during the year and I like it that you can change within a season.”
Silverstone gave any thought about their own future concept –
Wolff: “We’ve seen the major step that Aston Martin was able to bring. And now McLaren. We have been fighting with the cars since a year and a half, trying to add performance. It came in, but it’s just chipping away at those small gains, rather than to do such a step. I really see the positives, because fundamentally, I don’t care whether we finish second or third. It’s important to find our way back to fighting for victories and the world championship. And whilst podiums are really happy for us to see that the car has potential, fundamentally. All sights are on the big prize. And that’s why it’s exciting to see that McLaren was able to find a second in performance.”
Going the Red Bull route –
Wolff: “The sidepods of the bodywork are just one part of the chassis and clearly looks like there are interesting solutions that open up. But most of the performance comes from the floor and the diffuser. We haven’t seen how they interpreted the regulations nor how they’ve done it. In my opinion, it’s just the fact that we see that the strong cars look a little bit the same when you look from the side and from top down. And certainly, that has played in our minds already back in the day. Maybe that’s just more indication where it goes.”
Sidepod concept is a differential –
Wolff: “We had the sidepod concept and the bodywork in the tunnel, very early on already to see which avenues you could open up and how much it would add to performance. And the relative loss of downforce, the way we measure it, was substantial. So it’s not something that we wanted to follow up early in the year. Will we change our design direction? I think we have a great group of aerodynamicists led by James and I’m sure that it will be a consideration seeing the step they made.”
Mercedes has anything in pipeline –
Wolff: “We are restricted by the cost cap. And by the relative less amount in wind tunnel and CFD time that McLaren was able to have; they finished further back in the championship. They were like 5th or 6th mid years. So they carried over that more wind tunnel time allocation. And that’s why it’s kind of difficult. Do I believe that we have upgrades in there that are going to fundamentally change to car? I don’t believe so. But we have a few small steps that are to come. And you can see that if you find the tenth or two or three, it puts you in a different position on the grid. And I think if we would have started and not been stuck behind Leclerc, who knows where we would have been on the medium. But we can do that step.”
Wind tunnel scene for McLaren –
Wolff: “I didn’t want to refer at all that the reasons for performances is in the more windtunnel time. I think it’s just good engineering, good decisions put well together on the right track. We need to see whether they can repeat that performance in Budapest, which is obviously the opposite in what you need. But it is always about marginal gains. And if you have 20% more windtunnel time allocation, and we gain two seconds over a year, that means four tenths. So if you have that four tenths or five tenths, in additional performances, that’s always going to help. But you still need to have the right innovation, design it well, put it on the car, correlate it with the tunnel and the simulation. So chapeau.”
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