Toto Wolff, the Team Principal of Mercedes, explains why the last season went worse than expected. The Team that looked impossible to beat in the period between 2014 to 2020 suddenly lost its hegemony. The champion racer who brought all the glory remained the same, but the engineers messed it up for the Team. The Austrian executive believes that too.
Wolff admitted that Mercedes made a terrible judgment regarding the regulations as they did not clearly understand the physics of the W13 car. He explained the details a bit while he spoke to The Times, saying, “the reality is we tried to run the car a little low to speed it up. But we did not expect it to get so low as it was touching the ground. So we had to try to lift it up again, creating all sorts of confusion.”
When Toto Wolff was asked if he should have been more involved with the development process, he mentioned, “our Team won so many constructor’s championships. Eight in a row, which is unbelievable. After having such success, if I started to meddle in the way the mechanics work, it would look odd.” He added that he is an observer when the mechanics are working on the car. But whenever they need any resource, he is always there for the Team. Having said that, the Mercedes boss mentioned, “we are a team, and we share the blame for these failures.”
A Brief Summary Of What Went Wrong For Mercedes
In 2021 it was a close encounter between the seven-time champ and the new champ of the world. The youngster came out as the winner. It was controversial, though, regarding some technicalities. But the 2022 season saw some real problems with the W13 car of the Mercedes team. These issues caused the tremendous failure.
The Silver Arrows won a solitary Grand Prix in Brazil with a promising talent in the unit named George Russell. The seven-time champ faced his first winless season since he could not win a single race. The Team pointed the main cause of this failure to the terrible bouncing issue due to porpoising trouble of the car. The Mercedes drivers often complained of bruises and neck and back pain. In the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, 2022, the injury was the biggest concern as Lewis Hamilton had trouble getting out of the car, and finally, when he managed to get out of the vehicle, he was visibly in a lot of back pain.
On The Budget Cap Issue, Toto Sounded Optimistic
In 2022 Chase Carey, the ex-executive chairman of Formula One, introduced the rule of limited budget on technological developments that all the teams will be allowed. Chase Carey made this rule to help the race get more competitive for all ten teams. Mercedes had a hard time adapting to these new regulations, coming third in the constructor’s championship last year. Hence, lost their domination in that championship as well.
Even then, the CEO of the Silver Arrows F1 team said, “this is good for the motorsport because earlier only the three teams, Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari, would come close to clinching the title due to their big budget. But now it is fair for the rest of the teams. This is very similar to NFL and NBA, where they have limited budget to arrange their roster. After the introduction of the new rule it is great for the business side of the sport. It is profitable for all of us.”
