Toto Wolff tends to wear his heart on his sleeve, after the being trounced by Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari at the Belgian Grand Prix the Mercedes chief acknowledged that his team are lagging in the development race which has given the red cars an edge over the Silver Arrows.
After watching Lewis Hamilton chase Vettel all afternoon at Spa-Francorchamps, with a car that simply did not have the legs on their rivals, Wolff explained, "You can see the deficits. It is the slow speed and it is the traction. This is what I would summarise as the main weaknesses at the moment."
"[At Spa] we were clearly - compared to the Ferraris and the Red Bulls and the Force Indias - the car that was cooking the tyres the most."
After finishing second, Hamilton was quick to point out that it was not a contest between his car and the Ferrari in the top speed stakes, the championship leader suggesting "trick things" as the advantage the Italian team currently have in hand.
The World Champion said, "I did everything I could but he drove past me like I wasn’t even there, He sailed past me on the straight."
Wolff agreed with his star driver, "They have a power advantage. We have seen that in Qualifying. On various parts of the straight you can see that, even if the exits are not worse than ours, their engine keeps pulling"
"Then, you add that to our weaknesses out of Turn 1 especially and that causes the double whammy. If you aren't very good on traction and you are being outperformed slightly on power, then lap one happens."
"The last one where we have been quickest in pure pace was Silverstone. We have been really good in France and in Austria and since then Ferrari has been quicker. Budapest it was no surprise and Spa was always a bit of a tricky one for us in the past as well."
"I am very curious to see how it is going to go at Monza. Last year, we were very much in control of the whole weekend and Ferrari had their worst weekend of the season performance-wise."
"We will have some tracks that suit us, or that should suit us more. And then there will be tracks where we are definitely the challenger, like Singapore and maybe Mexico."
"Nevertheless, there are eight more races to go, many points to score and now is the time to really outperform and answer some of the questions," added Wolff
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