Wolff admits Mercedes situation is ‘brutally painful’

Mercedes is in a “brutally painful” position three races into the Formula 1 season, team principal Toto Wolff concedes.

Mercedes has only scored a best result of fifth place so far this season, with both cars retiring from the last round in Melbourne. Lewis Hamilton was out early with a power unit issue, while George Russell crashed in the closing laps chasing Fernando Alonso. A post-race penalty for Alonso cost Aston Martin two points and dropped it behind Mercedes into fifth in the constructors’ standings, and Wolff insists there is reason for optimism but he doesn’t know when Mercedes will turn its form around.

“When I look at the positives, I think we took many potential root causes out of the equation,” Wolff said. “We weren’t sure about our suspension. We weren’t sure about the stiffness of our gearbox carrier. We had a vibrating steering rack. All of those things have disappeared.

“But fundamentally, whatever we see in the tunnel doesn’t correlate with what’s happening on the track. It is not a single person that says, ‘I would interpret that data in this way’ and because of dogmatism, we’re not making any progress. I don’t see dogmatism. I see an open environment where people share, where people say, ‘Maybe in my area we are making mistakes.’

“It’s so tough — in my career, in everything I’ve done before, be it in finance and investment — that you know which screws to turn. Sometimes it takes time because back in my Williams days, I knew what was missing. But here, I don’t think we are missing something. It is just a complication of what’s happening with the car that we can’t see.