Toto Wolff reveals Mercedes needs “two or three tenths” to challenge Red Bull and Ferrari
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Toto Wolff
Toto Wolff the Mercedes team Principal is happy with what the Brackley-based Mercedes team has done in the last few races and has revealed what the team needs to do in order to fight with the two top teams going ahead into the 2022 season.
Mercedes is improving with every Grand Prix, and in Austria, the team was able to show solid pace on the back of which Hamilton and Russell were able to pull off a 3rd and 4th place finish for the team.
This was an extremely impressive result considering the massive crash that both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell had during the Q3 session of the Austrian Qualifying.
Toto Wolff is happy with the team’s steady progression but has admitted to the fact that they need to do a lot of work to challenge Red Bull and Ferrari this season.
While talking about his assessment of the team, Wolff said, “We’re still lacking these two or three tenths in performance.”
“Overall, the car was much quicker [on Sunday than Saturday], but not quick enough to really challenge at the front.”
Moreover, the Austrian has stressed the fact that his team is now on top of the porpoising issue that hindered their progress during the early part of the season and has said, “I think it’s pure performance.”
“The porpoising, I think we got on top of. I think if we were to go back to Monaco and to Baku, we wouldn’t be great, but for sure [we would] not have the problems that we’ve seen a few weeks ago.”
Toto Wolff believes Austria has never been a good hunting ground for Mercedes
Mercedes was not able to get close to Red Bull and Ferrari in Austria and Wolff has revealed that the team faced a small issue during the race because of which they were not able to fully unleash the W13.
“It seems like we’re lacking a tiny bit of power here, which we need to assess why, whether it’s the altitude.”
“Overall, [it] was never a happy track for us in Austria.”
“Predominantly, over the last eight years that we’ve been successful in the championships, this was the one track where we would struggle.”
“[On Saturday], we were really stuck in no man’s land, and I think [on Sunday we were] maybe stuck in no man’s land from the positioning on the track, but the lap times were at least competitive.”
The French Grand Prix weekend starts on the 22nd of July and given how things have panned out for Mercedes in the last few races, they certainly would be looking to maintain that at Paul Ricard and if possible, would be looking to put up a stiff challenge for Ferrari and Red Bull.
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Rishabh Negi
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