Toto Wolff says he remains confident that Mercedes is in possession of a fast race car despite its struggles at the start of the 2022 Formula 1 season.
Mercedes ended the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday in fifth and sixth place, as it was notably the third-fastest team in the field.
The reigning Constructors’ Champions have struggled with his challenger at the opening rounds this year, as it has suffered from severe bouncing on the straights.
Having scored just two podiums in the opening five races of the campaign, Wolff is sure that the W13 car has potential, with the team’s understanding of how to extract it being the only factor holding it back.
“We’ve been straight from the beginning, flying in the fog a little bit,” Wolff said.
“It’s clear there’s potential in the car and she’s fast, but we just don’t understand how to unlock the potential.
“It’s a car that is super difficult to drive and on the edge, dipping in and out of the performance window – more out than in.
“And discussing the data with a scalpel is just a painful process because it takes very long.”
Wolff added that the team is also dealing with a peculiar issue in that the negative feedback that the drivers are giving the team doesn’t necessarily show up on data.
“As a matter of fact, the data sometimes doesn’t show what the drivers tell us,” he said.
“Certainly they have their hands full with a car that is just not at all comfortable, nice or predictable to drive. But the data doesn’t show any of these big swings.
“We haven’t had this situation before in any of the years, that it just didn’t correlate on the screens what the driver feels and that is just making it even more difficult.”
… Formula 1’s Mr. T, the time’s finally come to hand Lewis Hamilton his walking papers. In his narcissistic plunge to social media victim-hood, Hamilton’s dragging down that team. Everyone’s sick and tired of his attitude; his sulking; everyone’s sick and tired of looking at him –
Care to take a wild guess who the 800 pound gorilla is at Mercedes F1? We’ve got plenty of F2 drivers more than capable of coping quite well with Wolff’s W13
Two things Hamilton and Wolff share, in common: Toto Wolff’s #1 problem: Lewis Hamilton. Lewis Hamilton’s #1 problem: Lewis Hamilton –
What does 21 Century F1 success do, for a man? Michael Schumacher’s a vegetable, while Eddie Irvine lives the high life. Mark Webber’s a happy guy, while the scruffy, disheveled Sebastian Vettel looks more like an ANTIFA eco-terrorist. Nico Rosberg got out while the getting was good, while Lewis Hamilton’s gone off the rails, kneeling to social media pressure on his ghetto hip-hop gangbanger tattoo binge. Lewis Hamilton looks more like an ex-convict than a knight of Queen Elizabeth’s round-table.
Hamilton drives the car like he’s playing a slot machine, just sitting there pulling the arm, as long as money keeps coming out.
One thing certain, by now Wolff has a driver for Hamilton, warming up in the bullpen. Alpine’s got one for Fernando, Zack’s got one for Ricciardo. Lawrence has one for Vettel.
If Torger Wolff and his team didn’t have to spend so much of their concentration covering up, propping up, bolstering Hamilton, tolerating his behavior, that car would be a whole lot faster.
The problem with Mercedes F1 isn’t the car. It’s Hamilton.
Wolff’s a good politician. But, he’s no engineer. Hamilton takes what you give him, and drives it like a stolen car. Without an engineer-driver (e.g., Nico Rosberg) as his stablemate, developing the car for him, without Niki Lauda there to babysit, Hamilton is hopelessly lost.
So steeped in late’70s, early ’80s ground effects, it surprises me the McLaren, the Renault (e.g., Alpine) and the Williams people put such relatively slow cars to the grid, under the current formula.
Red Bull and Mercedes, no history whatsoever to fall back on with early 80’s ground effects, who would have guessed the contrast in their performance would be so vivid, Red Bull a contender, the Mercedes people utterly clueless?
Similarly so, fastest cars on the grid during the early 80’s ground effects era, Ferrari and Renault, I would have thought the Renault people would have vaulted to the sharp end of the grid, right there with Ferrari!
Want to bet me coffee and doughnuts the Ferrari people pulled Patrick Tambay’s old 126C2 off the museum floor, for a wind tunnel study?
No two ways about it, everybody but Ferrari and Red Bull were caught flatfooted. No excuses for McLaren, Renault, and Williams, coming to the grid with a defective aero package.