“We can’t let it happen,” Toto Wolff warns Mercedes not to go into a “downward spiral” like Red Bull and Ferrari did during previous F1 seasons

Toto Wolff’s Mercedes, was nowhere near the Red Bull and the Ferrari F1 team during the 2022 season in terms of challenging for race wins continuously.

Mercedes ended the campaign in P3 in the Constructors Championship and Toto Wolff has recently admitted that his team can’t afford to get itself into a downward spiral, the way Ferrari and Red Bull did back in the day.

The Brackley-based team was the top dog of the sport since the start of the turbo hybrid era. However, the regulation changes of this year caught the team off guard and the result of it was there for everyone to see during the 2022 campaign.

During the season, the Silver Arrows were plagued with porpoising and it took them a decent number of months to get on top of the issue.

Moreover, it later came out that there was a fundamental issue on the W13 that could not be rectified midway through the campaign.

All in all, this year’s F1 campaign was one that Wolff. and Co. would want to forget as soon as possible.

Toto Wolff does not want Mercedes to repeat what Ferrari and Red Bull did during their glory days

The pinnacle of motor racing’s last two spells of sheer dominance was enjoyed by Red Bull and the Ferrari F1 team.

However, things went south for them after a short period and Wolff does not want Mercedes to end up with the same fate.

While stressing about his rival team’s previous downfalls, Wolff added, “You can see that with Ferrari, they lost the whole top leadership and the key driver.“

“It is something that you can trace back [to when Schumacher, Brawn, and Todt all departed in 2006/07].“

“With Red Bull, it was a situation in which the power unit regulations changed, and fundamental parameters changed.”

“But we can be looking at that and thinking that we had better be careful.“

“This season has gone by in heartbeat, and we can’t let it happen where we look back after next season and be the one [asking: what happened?]”

Toto Wolff wants to get back to winning ways with the Mercedes F1 team next year and does not want to go into a slump after one bad season.

The 2022 F1 campaign was one where a lot of learning was done by all teams regarding the new generation of cars. Moreover, considering that Mercedes has got extremely clever minds in its arsenal, do you think they would be able to challenge for the Championship next year?