“Every step we take is coordinated with the FIA,” Toto Wolff clears out the drama around the podless Mercedes W13

“Every step we take is coordinated with the FIA,” Toto Wolff clears out the drama around the podless Mercedes W13

Mercedes' Team Principal Toto Wolff

The second of pre-season testing is two-thirds done, and we’ve seen some significant changes in the cars. The most notable change was that in the Mercedes W13, which went from side pods in Barcelona to entirely podless in Bahrain, and what’s astonishing is that these two rounds of pre-season testing were just two weeks apart, and Mercedes pulled off an incredible innovation and development in this time.

When the Mercedes pulled up in Bahrain testing with their podless car, heads turned around. It invited allegedly controversial comments from the Red Bull boss Christian Horner, saying it was illegal. While others believed that it was going to be controversial.

However, now the Mercedes’ boss Toto Wolff has stepped into the groud dismissing all the speculations and comments on his team’s car. The boss said in an interview with the Austrian agency oe24.at, has said, “We coordinated everything with the FIA. You can’t lean too far out of the window when it comes to new regulations.”

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Toto Wolff’s cautious optimism with the recent innovation

Toto Wolff
Toto Wolff

The Mercedes team principal appreciated the new innovation and hopes that it translates into better lap times as well, laying the foundation for “the eighth” of Lewis Hamilton. Toto said, “Now it also has to be fast. I hope we can do that by the start. We have to be careful not to trip over our own feet. Before we talk about title 8, we have to give him a really fast car.”

Speaking of the removal of pods from the recent version of the car, Toto Wolff said, ” Innovations are part of F1 history. But at the end of the day you have to translate that into lap times. At the moment we are looking at all possible setup variants under the motto: “Youth researches”. We need to get this bouncing under control.”

What Toto Wolff has made clear is that although the team might have figured out a way to get rid of extra weight from the car, they still have the challenge of porpoising to deal with, which still seems to be quite at large amongst all the teams on the grid. It’ll be exciting to see how the removal of pods helps Mercedes in a long run and with the lap times on the racing weekend.

ALSO READ: “I’m not worried at all,” Max Verstappen unaffected by the controversial Mercedes car in Bahrain testing