Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff has admitted Nico Rosberg’s gearbox failure has raised some concerns over the W05’s reliability, as for a third race in a row they’ve encountered a problem on one of their cars.
In Canada and Austria it was cooling, but they believe they are now on top of that issue, but were surprised to be hit with a gearbox fault which will be fully investigated.
“[We have] lots of concerns,” said Wolff. “The pace was really good and we understand much better what happened with our cooling issues, but then having a gearbox failure is a bit of a hit.
“You wouldn’t expect in 2014 having a DNF because of a gearbox breaking down. You have to look at the quality aspect of the way we look at things. You can have such a DNF once but not twice.”
The failure handed Lewis Hamilton a much needed home win and moved him closer to Nico Rosberg in the champoionship, but Wolff says he never doubted Hamilton’s focus despite errors in qualifying.
“He is mentally very strong,” he said. “One of the examples is that he had another pit stop that was not perfect on the left rear and the first thing he did was come on the radio and said ‘Don’t worry, we can make the next one better’.
“Winning at home always gives you a good boost, but I can tell you in the briefing in the morning he came in in good spirits and was very focused and very concentrated in a way that was really aggressive.”
