Toto Wolff talks about not getting the fundamentals right with the car once again after slow start to F1 2024, as he adds on his own situation.
Things are not getting right for Mercedes at all. Despite a positive intent to start the 2024 F1 season, they seem to be lacking still where they are behind Red Bull and Ferrari, while fending off the likes of McLaren and Aston Martin.
The Australian GP was a double disaster after engine failure for Lewis Hamilton and late accident for George Russell. But before that, they weren’t anywhere close to the podium positions, as the one race where Red Bull faltered, Ferrari took the mantle.
Wolff is in a dire position certainly and he is once again not entirely certain about the problems that they are facing. While they can sense that some of the root causes are out of equation, but there are things where they can’t co-relate the windtunnel numbers.
Wolff adds on his thoughts if he is the right person to lead Mercedes now when things are not going right at all for the German manufacturer since losing the title in 2021, especially when the new regulations kicked-in from 2022 onward.
Hard to get over negative thoughts after three years of fighting back –
Wolff: “I think there were times in the race in Australia where we massively lacked pace. And then there were times at the end when you compare like for like, we were doing OK. Still not where we want to be. But you could see in the second stint, Fernando on the medium, we couldn’t come anywhere close. The lap times looked like a second off the McLaren’s. And then suddenly the last one, when we went for it, not worrying too much, the lap times were competitive – not Sainz – but it was much better. So clearly, we started the season in the belief that this car is better than it was last year.
“Then you look at last year and look at these guys – Leclerc crashed out and Sainz was fourth and got relegated to outside of the top 10 because of the penalty. But on the road, he was fourth and McLaren was 17th, 18th, 19th. And they are 40s ahead of us. So obviously on one side, I want to punch myself on the nose. But on the other side, it is also a testimony of that when you get things right, you can turn it around pretty quickly and you just got to continue to believe. But at the moment it is very, a very tough time.
Why not angry now a days –
Wolff: “As an Austrian, we very much wear our heart on our sleeve and we see things very direct. An Austrian says ‘that’s really shit’, a British person would says ‘that’s interesting’. So I had to adapt the way I communicate in order to not create even more pressure in the team because it would break us. It’s not because of a lack of trying that we are not competitive. So I’d rather be helpful and encouraging and say ‘that’s interesting’.”
Problems not solving, what changing –
Wolff: “When I look at the positives, I think we took many potential root causes out of the equation. We weren’t sure about our suspension. We weren’t sure about the stiffness of our gearbox carrier. We had a vibrating steering rack. All of those things have disappeared. But fundamentally, whatever we see in the tunnel doesn’t correlate with what’s happening on the track. It is not a single person that says, ‘I would interpret that data in this way’ and because of a dogma, because of dogmatism, we’re not making any progress. I don’t see dogmatism. I see an open environment where people share, where people take themselves by the nose and say, ‘Maybe in my area we are making mistakes’.
“It’s so tough in my career, in everything I’ve done before, be it in finance and investment, that you know which screws to turn. Sometimes it takes time because back in my Williams days, I knew what was missing. But here, I don’t think we are missing something. It is just a complication of what’s happening with the car that we can’t see. It’s like an on-off switch. And then you see the progress that McLaren and Ferrari have made. This is the difference between last year and this year. Australia was a pretty good weekend for us last year. We were leading at the beginning one and two. So we’ve got to really dig deep because of it is brutally painful.”
Lack of understanding, fundamentals not right –
Wolff: “The performance of the car is made by some fundamentals and then some variables. And I think in the variables, all of the aerodynamics effect on the car, the mechanical adjustments that we make, the basic performance is made in a factory. And then you have a certain amount of tools that you can dial on to make it better or worse. I had that feeling until last weekend that there is a good car.
“I haven’t lost that feeling that there is a good car because there are sessions throughout the week, and then also the last two ones, where we are absolutely right up there in terms of performance and then we lose it again. FP3, within a tenth of everybody else. Quali, 0.7s. And then race days was never there this weekend. You could see that McLaren, Ferrari they were going 0.7-1.0s quicker on Friday already and we had no answer to that.”
Need design guru, drivers’ reaction –
Wolff: “You always need to look at ourselves like I need to look at myself. Is it. What is it? Why is it that we can’t get there? We’re humans. The data doesn’t take decisions. Humans do. So we’re not stopping. I’m not sitting here and dwelling. But on the contrary, I’m thinking of what else is it that we need to do? And how can we push? I think the drivers are super in this whole setup because Lewis is as good as you can be. He’s in a situation obviously where he, on one side, it’s super frustrating to see that we are not getting it. On the other side, look over the fence. It’s pretty good what’s happening there. But that is not his main priority today. And George is just a fighter and he’s sticking in and he knows that’s place. So we’ve got to sort this out.”
Right person to lead Mercedes still –
Wolff: “As a co-owner of this business, I need to make sure that my contribution is positive and creative. So I would be the first one to say, ‘If somebody has a better idea, tell me, because I’m interested to turn this team around as quickly as possible’. I’ll happily give my input and see what that would be, who that could be. But we have a physics problem and not a philosophical or organisational problem because we haven’t swallowed a dump pill since 2021. It’s just we don’t understand some of the behaviours of the car that in the past we would have always understood.
“I look myself in the mirror every single day about everything I do. And if I believed that I should ask the manager question or the trainer question, I think it’s a fair question, but it’s not what I feel at the moment that I should do. But if you have any ideas who could turn this around, I’ll happily listen to that. The big difference is, it’s not the manager question in terms of this is my job and I will stop the job that somebody else is doing the job… I haven’t got that choice, which is also unfortunate. I’m not a contractor or employee that says, ‘I’ve had enough of this’. My hamster wheel keeps spinning and I can’t jump out.”
Here’s Lewis Hamilton on being calm
Here’s George Russell, Toto Wolff on no red flag
Here’s Fernando Alonso on penalty call plus explaining his side
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