‘A world away from fluffy instagram posts’: Toto Wolff gives an insight into the harsh and brutal world of F1
Toto Wolff
Since the hybrid era started, Mercedes and Toto Wolff have been a force to be reckoned with. They have won a title at least in each of the seasons except in 2021 where they won the constructors title but lost the driver’s title to Max Verstappen. There has been a big regulation change introduced in 2022 which drastically changed the design of the cars. With these changes, Mercedes was caught out and lost their streak of having the best car each season. The Brackley based squad has been suffering from porpoising the most compared to the other teams.
It looks like Mercedes will not be winning either championships this season. With the amount of struggles that the team has faced this season, the team hasn’t even won a race so far. Team boss Toto Wolf was optimistic about it and didn’t strike out the possibility of a victory this season.With their ongoing struggles, they haven’t been that bad. Mercedes have amassed multiple podiums this season with their highlight being George Russell scoring a pole position for the team in the Hungarian Grand Prix which took place before the start of the summer break. Even though their pace wasn’t enough to convert the pole into a win, it gave a sense of motivation to the staff.
Coming to Spa after the summer break it came as a surprise to the whole paddock when they got to see how bad the Mercedes’s pace was all round the weekend. After Hungary there were high expectations but they all fell after the two drivers were almost 2 seconds slower than Max Verstappen during qualifying. Toto Wolff has always enlightened is with the coming back stronger after losing campaign that is normal at Mercedes but recent times have kind of demolished that idea to some extent. Toto explained the situation.
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“Today we’re getting it wrong,” Toto Wolff on his team’s struggles
“Today we’re getting it wrong,” he said. “The non-correlation in the various areas is causing us to not perform.
“Maybe there is a single thing that overshadows everything and therefore we’re not doing justice to question really every part of the car,” he continued.
“Are the tyres something that we fundamentally don’t understand and actually all the rest is good? Or is the aero messing it up? Or is it the mechanical balance? I think that is so difficult to dissect. As they say in F1, you never lose, you learn. But I can tell you it’s very difficult: with all these nice Instagram posts and everything we’ve talked about over eight years about the way we’re going to take this,” he said.
“When you’re arriving there in the dungeon, to stick to your principles and to your values, keep the spirit up and really continue to relentlessly seek to get better…. there’s more to write a book about this year than there is about the last eight years,” he concluded.
For Toto Wolff and the people at Mercedes, this scenario has appeared after multiple years. It’s hard to adjust to it and work towards getting back to their winning days when you’re lacking the pace on track day in and day out. Mercedes and Toto haven’t been as motivating when it comes to coming back stronger after falling and it shows.
Also read : “Nobody in the team thinks that kind of deficit is acceptable,” Toto Wolff distraught with Mercedes’ lackluster quali outing
Varad Joshi
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