© Sebastian Kawka for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ltd.
Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff attended the Japanese Grand Prix Friday Press Conference. Here is the full transcript.
Q: Can I just open this to the other three? How many teams have a spare chassis at the races? Could I just ask all of you? Ayao, do Haas have a spare chassis here in Suzuka?
Toto WOLFF: Well, we have a different infrastructure and resource than Williams, so we have. But I remember times, even at Mercedes, where it was difficult to get that third one out at the beginning of the season, so we were running that risk at well. And certainly in my time at Williams, I don’t think we had any spare chassis for most of the season.
Q: Toto, coming to you now. You’ve had double DNFs before, but they’ve always been aberrations in otherwise dominant seasons. And in that context, how much did Melbourne hurt?
TW: My calibration is different. I think we are honest. We know where we are on track and what performance step we need to make. And if the car is quick, I’m happy. If the car is not quick, none of us is happy. And whether we DNF or not is a matter of Constructor points. But we’re looking for pace. George had an accident and Lewis DNF’d on the engine, which both of them can happen when you go racing cars.
Q: Can I ask you about George’s accident? You’re a former racer. What did you make of what Fernando Alonso did?
TW: You can hear the drivers. They obviously understand much more on a track that I’ve never raced on. They’re split. I think Fernando was aggressively defending with trying to take out the momentum before the corner. Maybe he’s overdone it. And George was just trying to, you know, make an overtake there, but also takes a certain part of responsibility for having lost the car there. So what I make of this accident, I think in these high-speed corners, maybe… You need to take a little bit of the karting philosophy out of killing speed before the corner in order to have a better accident. But who am I to say, I’m not sitting in that car, I’ve never been on that level, so I’m just an observer and I look at the data and throttle and brake input, and that was very different on that lap to all the others.
Q: Just one more from me. James Allison has spoken since Melbourne about correlation issues and a need to revamp your simulation tools back in Brackley. Do you feel you’re far behind your rivals in those respects?
TW: Well, on the stopwatch we are. So there is a crook somewhere in the system because we’re measuring downforce much more than we see on the lap time. And that’s something that we have been struggling since those regulations came in in 2022. So we are at the point now where we are trying new avenues in order to assess how we can really… translate the performance that we see in the virtual world into the road, which we haven’t been able so far to do.
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QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Adam Cooper – Motorsport.com) A question for Toto about Kimi’s test program. I think at one stage the provisional plan was to wait until he was 18 in August before giving him a run. Obviously now he’s going to be in Austria in a couple of weeks. Does that change sort of reflect the fact that you can’t wait to assess him and get him up to speed? And can you tell us a bit more about what the plans are for him?
TW: The programme of Kimi driving Formula 1 has been in place for a long time and hasn’t changed massively over the last few weeks. What we have done is added more days, but what you will see in the next few months has been in place, whether or not he’s going to sit in a Formula 1 car next year. So, yeah. We’re going to do a few of these days for him to get comfortable in an F1 car. He’s driving the 2021 car in Austria for the first time. We want to give him a feeling what a really good car feels like before we put him in the ’22. Obviously, he’s been our young boy since a long time, with James, and we’re keen to see what he’s able to do in a Formula 1 car. Ollie Bearman was refreshing to look at how competitive he was in Saudi Arabia. No free practice, high speed, complicated track, and he was right up there. So Kimi would be doing just fine.
Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Toto, another driver question for you. At the other end of the age spectrum, Sebastian Vettel. He’s been speaking in recent days, saying that he’s been talking to you about various things. Lewis said yesterday he thought that Seb would be an amazing option for Mercedes next year. Is Sebastian Vettel a serious consideration on your shortlist for next season?
TW: Sebastian is someone that you can never discount. I think his track record is phenomenal. And sometimes maybe taking a break is also good to re-evaluate what’s important for you and refine your motivation. As I said before, I think we haven’t taken the decision yet. And it’s not something that we plan to do in the next few weeks. I know that the driver market is very dynamic. Some of the really good guys are about to sign for some of the other teams. We want to continue to have these discussions and keep the options open. But at that stage, I think it’s much too early for us to commit to a driver, whether very young or whether very experienced – I don’t want to say old – very experienced, which the next few months will give us more clues.
Q: Toto, you say it’s too early, but have you whittled it down in your mind to one, two, three drivers? Have you got that far?
TW: Yes.
Q: Can you give us a number?
TW: No.
Q: (Jon Noble – Autosport.com) Jon for Toto. You originally weren’t coming to this race. What was the decision-making process to decide that you were coming? And in terms of leadership challenge, how is this season compared to some of the struggles you’ve had over the past two seasons?
TW: Yeah, I had planned not to come to Japan because there’s so much on back in Europe, things to do. But then I felt not coming to Japan was the wrong choice. I think it’s important to be with the race team also. It does me good also to be close to the action. We are experimenting with a few things and then being part of the team really gives me energy. I hope the other way around too. So that’s why I decided against staying in Europe. And the struggle that you’ve mentioned. I think we’re a sports team. We’ve won eight times in a row and that hasn’t been done before. you have periods where you struggle like any other sports team and you can’t win every time. That’s why this is a super challenge. It’s not a race, it’s not one single season and then you come back out on top, but it’s the third one in a row. But I remain absolutely convinced that we will be looking back in a few years and saying that was so tough but so important for the development of the team from maybe an organisational standpoint, from re-evaluating our tools and systems, which clearly don’t work as good as they did in previous regulations.
Q: (Joost Medema – NOS) A question for Toto. Could you, as the most senior team principal in this group, tell me something more about the situation James has found himself in in Australia with the decision he took to take Logan out of this car? What does it take for him as a team principal? And how would you work together with the driver in that situation for the rest of the season?
TW: Well, Bruno’s a bit older than me, you know. So in terms of seniority, you’re more experienced.
Bruno FAMIN: Quite a lot, yeah.
TW: Yeah, quite a lot. So what was your question? What?
Q: Just the decision that James had to make in Melbourne. Just what are your thoughts?
TW: That specific decision? Brutal, brutal, difficult situation for James and his senior team, because as a racer, you’re thinking like that doesn’t feel right, taking a car from one drive and giving it to the other. But James represents a large organisation with shareholders and investors, sponsors, a global market, and needs to maximise the points because every change of position is potentially tens of millions in difference and has long-term effects. Giving the car to the driver that has more probability in scoring the points is absolutely the right thing to do, as tough as it is for Logan. And I’m sure it would have been very tough for James to take that decision, but it was absolutely necessary.
Q: (Joost Medema – NOS, question): And what would it mean for the cooperation between team principal and driver for the rest of the season?
TW: I think what I’ve said always in the past, what I’ve learned from… When I asked Alain Prost the question in my early years of Mercedes, why did the relationship deteriorate between the drivers and with the management? He said, because it was never transparent. We never knew what actually was going on and why decisions were taken. And this is something that I tried to implement in the team. In Mercedes, very early on, and obviously James was part of my journey, I was part of his journey that sometimes… You know, transparency is everything. We are very open and some but sometimes the truth is brutal and difficult to take. But you know, if you’re Team Principal or a senior person in the organisation you’ve got to have to take that call and make the driver or whoever it is that is facing that situation, try to make them understand why you’ve been doing that. And sometimes that is a relationship that can thrive from there onwards because you trust each other in the terms of speaking the truth. Sometimes it’s affected in a negative way because it’s just difficult to take, but whatever it is, I think being open, honest, [with] integrity and transparent is most important.
Q: (John Getty – Reuters) Toto, can you confirm reports that the damage suffered to Lewis’s power unit in Melbourne is terminal? And what does that mean for the rest of the season? Is it concerning to lose one of the quota so early in the season and risk potential penalties later on?
TW: Yeah, that one is for the bin. It is a very highly unusual failure that we have, a hardware failure that we didn’t see coming before. So yeah, we can’t reuse that. And it depends how the season develops, whether we need one more or not. I can’t really see at that stage whether that will be needed or not.
Q: (Adam Cooper – Motorsport.com) A question for all of you. We had an unusual situation recently where McLaren hired a top technical name. They waited a year for his gardening leave to run out, but when he turned up, it turned out the job wasn’t really the one he was expecting, apparently. In these days where some teams have CTOs, occasionally multiple technical directors, performance directors, and so on, how hard is it to make sure you put people in the right places, you don’t have square pegs and round holes and so on, and that you give people, the top people, the responsibility that they’re expecting?
TW: Yeah, there’s not really much to add to what has been said. An organisation is a dynamic structure that can change a lot from one year to the other and then obviously there’s a human component also and all that plays a factor and I think you’ve got to be agile. You’ve got to be able to change decisions or revert to other decisions if you feel that they are not the right ones anymore. And without knowing the specifics of that case, I’m not surprised. In the conventional business out there, that happens all the time.
Source: FIA.com
