Wolff: Very long shot to even think of being in title contention
F1 NewsMonday, 21 March 2022 at 15:22
Only the first round of planned 23-rounds in the 2022 Formula 1 World Champion and, despite his cars finishing third and fourth at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff is already crying wolf but this time he may have good reasons.
Mercedes were trounced on Sunday in Bahrain, Lewis Hamilton and Geroge Russell were nowhere compared to the pace-setting Red Bulls and Ferrari duo; had the safety car not intervened with a dozen laps to go they might have been lapped...
But Lady Luck (which eluded Merc last time out in Abu Dhabi) was kind to the Silver Arrows on Sunday, with the Red Bulls facing her wrath (for whatever reason) dropping out unexpectedly right at the end, thus Mercedes left Bahrain with big smiles before they face the reality of their sub-standard package which is back on duty this weekend in Jeddah.
Of course, after the season opener, Wolff is not positive: “If we look at the pecking order, it seems it will be a very long shot to even think about being in contention for the drivers’ or constructors’ championships.
“We probably scored the maximum points that we could have on Sunday, and we need to take it from here. Every weekend counts. But at the moment we have to be realistic and when you are third on the road you cannot think about winning it," reasoned Wolff, whose team has been almost invincible for the best part of the past decade.
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The Mercedes W13 is not up to scratch despite its fine pedigree. Porpoising and all-round inefficiencies compared to the benchmark Red Bull RB18 and Ferrari F1-75.
Adding to their woes was the fact that the three Mercedes customer teams - Aston Martin, McLaren and Williams - were well out of contention for most of the weekend, anchored to the wrong end of the timesheets, all six of them! With occasionally Alex Albon and Lando Norris breaking ranks with gargantuan efforts.
The Woking outfit endured their worst weekend perhaps since the Honda "Formula 2 engine" days while Lawrence Stroll's team were simply awful on the day. And Williams were Williams, bad again.
Wolff: It would have been brilliant if we solved it in testing where we had so much running
The Mercedes team principal explained in layman's terms: “This bouncing we are experiencing down the straight is slowing us down because we are smashing into the ground, rather than going forward. It is promising to see that other cars have had the same issue and they managed to solve it which means there is a solution there, but we are struggling to find it.
“It would have been brilliant if we solved it in testing where we had so much running. But we truly just don’t know how long it will take, if it is next weekend or after the summer break. We hope it will be as soon as possible, but there is no reason why it may not continue the whole year," feared Wolff.
Hamilton was in good spirits as a podium was hardly in his sights, thus the damage limitation was about as good as it could get for the team. But such anomalies are rare, unless Red Bull have a serious PU problem, and had they finished it would've been a far bleaker weekend.
But the seven-time F1 World Champion told reporters after the race at Sakhir: “I’m hoping for the next race we manage to find some improvements but it’s a fundamental issue that’s going to take a little bit longer to fix.
“Given that we have been faced with these challenges which we were not expecting, no one’s been down during this phase where we’ve been struggling. Everyone’s stayed positive, everyone’s just kept their head down and kept working. No one’s moaned and that’s great to see," added Hamilton.
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