“We’re just not good enough” – after the first qualifying session of the season, the mood at Mercedes is very depressed. The former Formula 1 Primus is clearly behind the top for the second year in a row. Team boss Toto Wolff announces massive changes.
Head of Mercedes Motorsport Toto Wolff gave up his racing team’s vehicle concept after the first qualifying session of the Formula 1 season. “I don’t think this package will be competitive in the long term,” said the Austrian in Bahrain and announced: “We will sit down with the engineers, without any dogmatism, there are no sacred cows.”
George Russell and record world champion Lewis Hamilton had only achieved starting positions six and seven for the race on Sunday (4 p.m. / Sky and in the live ticker on ntv.de). The Red Bull and Ferrari as well as ex-world champion Fernando Alonso in the powerful Aston Martin were sometimes well ahead of the world champion racing team from 2014 to 2021.
After the false start of the past season, an increase towards the end of the year with Russell’s victory in Brazil, Wolff does not want to be as patient again. “We’re just not good enough, we don’t have enough downforce. We have to find solutions to fix that,” he said. “We started last year six tenths down and we’re back now.”
Heads won’t roll, he asserted: “We have all the ingredients to be successful. It’s the people and the infrastructure that have won eight championships in a row. Last year we made a mistake that we thought we would could fix it by sticking with this concept of the car.”
In the medium and long term, however, he was convinced that he would provide a racing car “that would give Lewis an eighth world championship.” Hamilton declared on Thursday that he would extend his contract, which expires at the end of the year, even if the W14 does not turn out to be ready for the title. “We’ll get together when we’re ready. We’ll get it done,” said the 38-year-old Brit.
