Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has elaborated on how his team has learned to manage pressure inside what he described as a "safe environment" during a tough qualifying session for the Japanese Grand Prix.
Throughout the course of the qualifying hour, mixed weather conditions affected the Suzuka circuit, creating more and more pressure for the team to select the correct tyre options and get on track at precisely the right time in their search for pole position.
Wolff's explanation came in the wake of Lewis Hamilton leading Valtteri Bottas for a front-row lockout, while rival Ferrari erroneously took on Intermediates for the start of Q3, contributing to its drivers taking only fourth (Kimi Raikkonen) and eighth (Sebastian Vettel).
Wolff expressed sympathy towards Ferrari's plight, commenting: "I can't really judge [others] because I am not in any other team, but what we try to establish is a safe environment, which is easier said than done.
"There is a lot of pressure, but we are trying to channel it in a positive way. In that session there were a lot of F-words when the session panned out and a lot of discussions and various inputs. But at the end, it is important as a team to get it right more often than we get it wrong.
"But we have had our fair share of criticism. I remember Austria this year where we pitted Lewis out of the lead, so I think we are trying to stay humble and accepting that it's not always easy.
"But what is easy is to comment afterwards and everybody knows the answer afterwards, but in the heat of the moment keeping it together is not trivial."
He added: "It was a very tricky session today to get it right, we were debating Intermediates versus Supersofts for a long and we decided last minute – we had them ready and then we changed them – and then went out and got the timing perfect.
"Our weather frog on the pit wall really got the rain perfect saying it would hit in six minutes, four minutes, two minutes and then it hit.
"So it was just circumstances really and we decided the right things at the right moment, but there is certainly a little bit of luck factor in there also insofar that I wouldn’t want to be negative about Ferrari’s decision."
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