today, 10:55 PM | by Mark Hanselman
While Austrian Helmut Marko was in a great mood in Brazil, the same could not be said for compatriot Toto Wolff, who after the São Paulo Grand Prix looked for the right words to completely destroy the Mercedes car after According to Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes fell short on the straights and in the corners.
As Wolff Ted Kravitz from Sky Sports F1 it soon becomes clear that the Mercedes team boss is very disappointed with his team’s rather weak race. ‘An unforgivable achievement. There are not even words for this,” Wolff says in disbelief. ‘That car finished second last week and the week before that too’, although Wolff forgets to mention that Hamilton was disqualified in Austin due to too much wear and tear on the plank under the car. Mercedes probably kept a little more margin in Brazil on a bumpy circuit during a sprint weekend.
Wolff sympathizes with Hamilton and Russell
In the end, only Hamilton took four points with an eighth place, although the damage to the constructors was limited due to the retirement of Charles Leclerc. ‘What we did is terrible. Lewis managed to survive. “I can only sympathize with both drivers that they had to drive something so miserable,” Wolff continues.
‘It shows how difficult the car is. It is at the cutting edge and we have to develop that better next year. It can’t be that you finished on the podium seven days ago with the fastest car, or one of the two fastest cars, and now you’re eighth. We are clearly not world champions in sprint weekends. We are doing a good job on the track, but we have no explanation for what went wrong. It was almost as if we were riding on three wheels instead of four.’
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Hamilton drove a hopeless race in the shadow of the top riders.
Mercedes doesn’t deserve a win
“Top speed was a problem, but not the biggest problem,” Wolff said of the parachute that appeared to be hanging behind the W14. ‘The main problem was that we couldn’t get through the corners with the big rear wing, and we killed the tyres. We ate the tires within a few laps.’
Before the weekend, Wolff indicated that he wanted to end the season with a victory, but he is now backtracking on that. ‘This car doesn’t deserve a win. We have to push and recover in the last two races, that’s the most important thing now. We have to see what we can do in Las Vegas, because that’s a completely different circuit, and in Abu Dhabi, but the performance today was… I have no words for it.’
Finally, Wolff discussed George Russell’s failure. ‘George had a problem with the power unit. We had cooling problems. It was the last race for this power unit, but it is what it is. I don’t know if we would have gotten a point or not, so that is not our biggest problem,” Wolff concludes.
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2023-11-05 21:55:00
#Wolff #destroys #W14 #sympathize #drive #miserable #Maximum
