– Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff openly admits that he is one of those people who tend to see the glass as half empty rather than half full. He also warns ahead of the new Formula 1 race in Madrid this weekend that the Silver Arrows might not be able to fight for the win there.
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Although Mercedes celebrated a dominant double victory last Sunday in Monza, where Kimi Antonelli even drove all the way to the front from 19th on the grid, Wolff emphasizes ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix: “This weekend presents us with a completely different challenge.”
“The track characteristics are more similar to those of Budapest or Zandvoort,” he explains, and indeed Mercedes was unable to win any of the races he mentioned. In both Hungary and the Netherlands, Lando Norris in the McLaren came out on top in the end.
“Monza was one of our strongest race weekends of the season,” Wolff admits. But because the new street circuit in Madrid is a completely different track, they expect “a hard-fought weekend,” says the Austrian, who reminds that Monza “is an exception” in the Formula 1 calendar.
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No other track runs with so little downforce, which is why Wolff emphasizes: “Our car does not have the performance level for the next race in Madrid that it had in Monza. We know that our upgrades would be very helpful in Madrid, but since we don’t have them yet, we just have to do our best.”
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He means the new parts for the W17, which are only planned for the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. “And that could mean that this race weekend is not about winning, but merely about scoring points,” says the team boss.
Regarding the World Championship, Mercedes does not have to worry. In the drivers’ championship, Lewis Hamilton, as the best non-Mercedes driver after Monza, is already 76 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli. That translates to more than three race wins.
In the constructors’ championship, Mercedes is now 122 points ahead of closest rival Ferrari after the Monza double victory.
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