Toto Wolff revisits 2021 Championship battle with Red Bull, labels it the ‘most tiring year’ of his Formula 1 career

Mercedes Boss Toto Wolff has seen the F1 world up close and personal for several years but the last few years have posed a different kind of challenge to him. For a better part of his time as the leader of the Stuttgart outfit, Wolff has tasted victory since Mercedes have the record of winning eight back-to-back F1 titles from 2014 to 2021. Still, towards the end of their period of dominance in the pinnacle of motorsports, Mercedes found a sudden resurgence of the Red Bull Racing team. Their marqueé driver Max Verstappen gave Lewis Hamilton a run for his money in 2021 when the Dutchman earned his first World Championship by defeating his much more experienced British opponent at the very last race of the season in Abu Dhabi.

As the Team Principal, Toto Wolff did not take too kindly to Max’s controversial debut title victory. He even gave rise to the famous meme where he can be seen angry smashing his headphones on the table because he was not happy with how the 2021 season turned out. Since then, Mercedes have fallen from grace as far as their results are concerned. In 2022, they got only one Grand Prix victory and in 2023, they got none. But Wolff still believes it was 2021 that would always stay with him as the most tiring year of his career.

2023 was not the most tiring season of my career. 2021 was even more tiring, because we had an extremely intense duel in the World Championship with Red Bull.

Toto Wolff said at a recent interview , via FormulaPassion.

In 2023, Toto Wolff’s army saw their W14 car simply fail to keep up with the pace of the Red Bull ‘rocketship’ named RB-19. In fact, Lewis Hamilton put severe blame on the car for the lack of results for the team and himself in the recently-ended season. He also alleged that the team did not heed to the feedback that he had left to improve the W-14.

Toto Wolff is frustrated at Mercedes’ underperformance

In 2022, the FIA announced some ground-breaking rule changes that completely altered Mercedes’ leading position in the rankings. The team could not even improve their stance in the next season and it has been quite visible that they have not adapted to the new regulations as well as the Red Bull factory has. And this has made Toto quite frustrated as he complained about the underperformance of his own team at a recent interview.

This year we had different challenges. For example, in the second year after the great regulation revolution, we have still not managed to build a car that performs consistently well.

Now, the challenge rests upon Toto and his team to develope a car that can take on their mighty opponents like Red Bull and Ferrari in 2024. The German hinted at completely changing the team’s concept behind the car so that they can scrap their old performances and improve upon their results. Now, it remains to be seen if Toto’s words truly turn out to be true and Mercedes encounter a huge success next year.

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