Mercedes has one aim this season, and that is to win both the Drivers’ and the Constructors’ title. Failing to do so would be a disaster according to executive director Toto Wolff.
The team opened up an early performance advantage after Lewis Hamilton secured pole in Australia, whilst team-mate Nico Rosberg dominated the race to take victory.
Wolff says they must maintain and increase that relatively small advantage over their rivals to ensure they can achieve their goals at the end of the year.
“Yes, absolutely,” the Australian replied when asked whether not winning both titles would be a failure. “I don’t see that we have a big advantage, to be honest, because you can see if you have a DNF then you lose points, and McLaren are leading the constructors’ championship. Yes, we have a little bit of a margin and losing that would be something I’d consider as a failure.”
Whilst Rosberg managed to control the pace and keep a relatively big gap between himself and Daniel Ricciardo during the race, Wolff said their advantage was in no way a “comfortable buffer”.
“We have a margin performance-wise, but it’s not an awful lot,” he added. “If you look at where Red Bull have come from after very little mileage in testing, that is quite a wake-up call for everybody. Look at where they were two or three weeks ago in Bahrain, so we need to be very careful, and we haven’t seen Sebastian [Vettel] running with a reliable, fast car.
“You would expect him, with his experience, to go even faster so we have to keep on pushing. At Williams, if you look at Valtteri’s [Bottas] pace before he hit the wall, and again afterwards, then I’m quite sure they would have ended up on the podium. So I don’t think you can ever lean back and say ‘this is a comfortable buffer’.”
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