Mercedes Car Is Fastest, Wolff Says, Despite Losing Ground To Ferrari

Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team boss Toto Wolff admits that his team did not fulfill their potential during the sport’s first triple header that saw three races — the French, Austrian and British Grand Prix — taking place on three consecutive weekends.

The Silver Arrows team principal was ruing the fact they allowed Ferrari to take the lead in both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ championships despite bringing big upgrade packages on both the engine and aerodynamics front for the races.

Mercedes introduced a new engine for the French Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton cruising to take his third win of the season. They then brought a considerable aero upgrade to the Austrian GP and were favorites to take the win, but suffered a double retirement with both cars not making the chequered flag.

Ferrari just won one race, but their consistency saw them take a total of 98 points in the three races to take a 20-point lead over Mercedes. Sebastian Vettel brought in 50 of those points compared to Hamilton’s 43 points, which now sees him eight points ahead of the defending champion.

Despite the disappointments in Austria and Great Britain, Wolff is confident they will get back to winning ways soon as the Mercedes chief feels the reigning champions have the quickest car on the grid — a point proven by Mercedes taking pole position in all three races.

The German Grand Prix at Hockenheim on Sunday will mark the halfway point of the season and Ferrari have shown they are more than capable of challenging the four-time back-to-back champions for the title in 2018. But Wolff believes his team and their drivers have shown enough proof that they can kick-on and avoid the mistakes they made in the first half of the season.

"We didn't score as many points in the triple-header as we had hoped for," Toto said ahead of the German Grand Prix, as quoted on Mercedes’ official site. "A lot of that was down to our own mistakes. However, there is a silver lining to this - while we didn't maximise on points, we did bring the quickest car to all three races."

"Hockenheim will mark the halfway point of the 2018 season. We've had a decent first half — on the one hand, we've left points on the table and had to do damage limitation more often than we would have wanted,” he explained. "On the other hand, we still scored a good amount of points, both drivers have shown strong performances and we have a fast car. So, there are many reasons why we're looking forward to the second half of the 2018 season; we're hungry, ambitious and want to kick on from here."

There are two races before the summer break commences in August — the German and Hungarian Grand Prix — and the Silver Arrows team will be aware that the former is their best chance of getting back to winning ways as the track in Budapest suits the Red Bull and Ferrari more than the Mercedes.