© Sebastian Kawka for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ltd.
Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff attended the British Grand Prix Friday Press Conference. Here is the full transcript.
Q: So, it’s almost time to make this decision about tyre blankets for 2024. Fred, let’s start with you, what are your thoughts?
Frédéric VASSEUR: As Mario said, it’s a bit too early because we didn’t receive the report – but pretty in-line with Mario, I think that in the normal circumstances that we did the test – I think it was Bahrain – and it went pretty well. But the concern is not this one: the concern is that when we go on the low track in energy, and you will have cold conditions, in the extreme conditions – for example, Las Vegas, if you go there, you race at night and it’s 4°C, what could be the outcome of this? I think on 95 per cent of the conditions, it will be OK and they are doing a good job and honestly I think a couple of teams did the test and it went pretty well – but we are not able to anticipate what could be the situation in the extreme conditions – and this we have to wait for the report from Mr Pirelli.
Toto, your thoughts please.
Toto WOLFF: I would have said exactly what Fred said.
Q: Now, Toto, can I stick with you then. Let’s talk about this weekend, first of all. You’ve got the new front wing, we’ve just had a practice session, what can you tell us?
TW: It was a valuable session because it was not only the front wing, we tested a few aero parts and then obviously seeing how the new tyres performed and generally we got the programme done. We didn’t run the Soft tyre, so it’s difficult to judge where we would have ended-up – but it’s not important. That was not our aim. It was really to see whether we can collect some data on the interesting bits. So that was good. Generally, I’m happy with FP1.
Q: After what you called a bruising experience in Austria last weekend, do you think Mercedes can bounce back here?
TW: I’m of the firm belief that we have everything that’s needed to bounce back. We had a bad weekend and these cars are not only fast but for everyone are unpredictable. We’ve seen other teams – be it Ferrari or Aston Martin – also having these outliers, even within Red Bull, Checo has been in and out. So yeah, we very much hope that this was a track that was an outlier for us – but you know, it’s not like we’re going here with super-high expectations and it’s all full of roses. It’s not. We still need to improve the car.
Q: Hollywood is in town this weekend Toto and, of course, Mercedes has been heavily involved in the adaptation of the cars that they’re using at Apex Grand Prix. How excited are you to see the production process in action?
TW: Yeah, we’ve been involved pretty early and I think when we had the first discussions, we sent Brad to a driving school in France, going through the Formula cars from Formula 4 all the way up – and we tried to be helpful with the narrative. Lewis is an executive producer, so he wanted to make sure when the movie comes out, it’s as realistic as possible. And we had a few laughs – but I think it’s a very good narrative, and the effort they’ve put in, we helped them – it was Fred’s idea, I think – to use an F2 car and build the bodywork around it that looks like an F1 car. And then the garages and the pit wall, all of it, we tried to be helpful and give them the designs so they could be as realistic as possible. And then you see now, that is such an effort. I spoke to the director a few weeks ago and said: “where are you?” expecting him to tell me he’s in Hollywood – but he said: “I’m in my apartment in Brackley,” so it’s not all great with being a movie director. But yeah, massive, when you go in the garage and the whole set-up they have behind it, really unbelievable.
Q: Carlos Sainz won here last year Fred. Do you fancy your chances this weekend?
FV: We’ll have probably a better picture tonight after FP2 – but if you consider the last two races, I think we are still a step down compared to Max, and it will be a challenge – but at least to be in front of the others and you don’t know what could happen.
Q: In front of the Mercedes?
FV: …yes!
TW: Ain’t gonna happen!
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QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Toto, question for you, the team’s obviously been on a big journey to turn this car around. I remember in Bahrain after qualifying, you were quite frank about that package not going to be competitive at any point – what were the emotions like for you in that early part of the season, when you realised this car wasn’t going to get to where it was in the early part of the season, that all of the work over the winter hadn’t made that step you had been hoping for?
TW: Well, you’re bringing me back emotionally to frustrating days. I think these cars are just very different in the way you develop them and you look at them, than any previous regulations. It’s not trivial at all to develop the tools and assess them in the right way, to have the quickest car. And I believe that only one team has gotten that right so far, and obviously they carry that advantage with them. They are not stopping. And all of us behind: Ferrari, Aston Martin, and us – and you can see sometimes Alpine – we are all in a very tight bunch. Like Fred said: I believe, if everybody runs the same tyre in that previous session, we’re all within tenth or two. So it shows they’re tricky. And it continues to be an interesting journey. But at the end of the day, it’s mega: we need to break the run of a team that is the benchmark at the moment on merit, good engineering and a very good driver. Then we just got to go there. None of us has another choice than to catch up.
Q: (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) We have 11 teams here this weekend, one of them fictitious, but when it comes to 10 or 11 teams in real life, where do you stand? There’s a lot of pressure obviously on having an 11th team perhaps. Has your position changed at all in the last few months? Or is it still a question of maybe just 10 teams and if anyone wants to come in, they have to buy into an existing team?
TW: Yeah, pretty much unchanged. I mean, we have no visibility of who the applications came from, and what the proposals are, I think all the stakeholders – and I think mainly the FIA and FOM – will decide on such a new entry, will assess if the proposal is accretive for Formula 1? What does it bring us in terms of marketing and interest, and whether they want to think about introducing that. Our position was very clear: buy a team. But you know, there’s a lot of consequences. When you look at qualifying sessions, I mean already now we’re looking like on a go-kart track, we’re tripping over each other. There is a safety concern: we haven’t got the logistics, where to put an eleventh team. Here in Silverstone, we can accommodate the Hollywood people but on other circuits, we can’t. Then people like Audi and the venture capital funds, have been buying into F1 teams for considerably higher valuations. And so all of that is a picture that the FIA and FOM have to access. And, as I said before, if a team can contribute to the positive development of Formula 1, then… and in a way that the other teams have done, over the many years, have suffered over the many years… yeah, we have to look at it.
FV: For once, I’m pretty aligned with Toto, that first you can’t compare the impact of the movie and the impact of a team. Have a look at what happened last week. It was already a mess in Spielberg on track, with the track limits. Imagine if you have 10 per cent more infringements. But more seriously, we didn’t change at all the position, that I think it could make sense for the F1 only if it’s a huge push in every single direction. Very often we are speaking about the nationality of the team but for me it’s absolutely not an argument. F1 is not just a UK championship because we have 70 per cent of the teams based in the UK. The attractivity of the F1 is much more based on the nationality of the drivers and so it’s nothing to do with the nationality of the team.
Q: So, like Toto, Fred, buy a team. Is that your position? Buy an existing team?
FV: Yeah. Also today, we have a huge boom around the F1 but you have to keep in mind a couple of years ago the owners of the team made a huge effort, when the crisis was there, and it’s a kind of benefit today – but again, if there is a huge push for the Championship, for the F1, for everybody, all the stakeholders. Why not? But I don’t see we’re at that point today.
TW: There is no mature sports league in the world, whether it’s a national football championship, or the Champions League, the NBA, the NFL, the NHL, where such situation is possible, where you say I’m setting up a team and I’m joining, thank you very much for making me part of the prize fund. You have to give to qualify; you have to go through the ranks; you have to showcase the commitment to the Championship that we’ve done over the many years. But, to repeat what I said, and Fred, if it’s creative, then we must look at it. So far, what we’ve seen hasn’t convinced the teams – but we haven’t seen the applications and submissions that were made to the FIA and to Stefano, and they will judge whether that is positive for Formula 1 or not. But in any case, from a teams’ owner side, is there no leagues which just increased the entries, because that just dilutes the whole league. I think if it’s accretive then obviously not.
Q: (Matt Kew – Autosport) Toto, just to follow up on that, if you were to base a model on other championships, then that means lower down, you’d have promotions, and then teams that finished bottom of F1 would get relegated. Is that something therefore you’d be in favour of?
TW: No, I’m looking more at the American franchises. If everybody in the NFL agrees – the teams that own the franchise there, so it’s different to us – agrees to have another entry, to let another team in because of the right reasons, the right ownership, etc, etc, then that team is being admitted into the championship. And the same with most of the professional leagues in the US. We are a franchise, and this is how I would look at it.
Q: (Alasdair Reid – The Times) Toto, accepting that you you’ve said often you want to beat Red Bull fair and square with better engineering, do you worry that the extent of their dominance at the moment – 19 of the past 20 races or something like that – that people will start to turn off, they just find it too boring, too predictable, they just go away from the sport.
TW: From a fan’s perspective, I look at it and say, yeah, the risk is there. But the risk was there over the eight years that we were winning, and I would have said the same thing back then. You have the same team, the same driver winning all over, it becomes less variable. But, you know, as I said then, being in the positive situation, I would also say today that this is a meritocracy. And it’s honest. And when a team and the driver are just so far ahead, it’s because they’re simply doing a better job than everybody else, within the regulatory framework. And there is no way around it.
Q: (Jon Noble – Motorsport.com) To Toto and Fred, you’ve both changed development path in your car this season, but probably not been able to do as much as you wanted, due to architecture, cooling, side impact structures….
TW: Cost cap…
Q: (Jon Noble – Motorsport.com) …Cost cap. How much is the current version of your car a compromise on what you want to do? And how much more of a step is in the pipeline for next year and a jump needed to close that gap to Red Bull?
FV: Yeah, I think Toto is right. The main driver of this is the cost cap, that you can’t do a new project that it was probably the case a couple of years ago. It means that you have to adapt your project to the situation and in these conditions I think we did a decent step forward. You have also to consider that the regulation is much more prescriptive than before and it’s quite difficult to do a big step into the season. But we are, as everybody, we’re already working on the project of next year, trying to correct the direction.
TW: Yeah, again, I share Fred’s opinion. The cost cap is a real constraint now. Because you cannot just go for a B-spec car. We know that we have… Lewis and George have been pretty vocal about what they would want to change in the car and that’s simply not possible because we are lacking the financial corridor. And that’s why we’re looking very much at next year to change these things. What was the second question? Biggest step? Well, you know, when I asked Niki, many years ago, what do you want to concentrate on for this year’s championship and win it or next year’s he would say both. So I think it’s always continuing to develop those cars is important for our understanding. At the same time you mustn’t waste resource when you go to a, let’s say, different layout of car next year. So it’s balancing it out. But I guess that many teams are already quite a large chunk of development into next year.
Q: (Ian Parkes – New York Times) Toto, just getting back to the 11th team situation. Just, first of all, politely to point out that the NHL is one sport that has actually expanded with new franchises in recent years. Based on that, and based on your earlier comment, where you said that a potential new team has to contribute in a positive way, how does a new team do that before it even has an entry? What does it have to prove to F1 and the current teams, in particular, to show itself, that it’s worthy of a place? And also, surely an 11th of a bigger pie is much better than a 10th of a smaller pie going forward?
TW: So, first of all, the NHL has added teams and I’m very aware of it, because they have decided to do so, all the stakeholders. We have done that in the past when Formula 1 was on the brink of losing teams, because of bankruptcy. We increased the numbers of teams and nobody complained about that. On the contrary. We felt that we needed to make sure that we have 10 teams on the grid and not lose any. So these two factors are very different with the NHL to the current situation. And for the second point: I still have the belief that this is a league of franchises. And when someone comes in, then it should be like in the NFL, where you say what is it that the new team brings to the party? And that, I repeat, is for the FIA and FOM to decide. We can comment from the sidelines here and obviously our standpoint is clear, because we would only want to have a team that brings something to the cake, like you say, and an 11th team brings more than what they cost the other team, more show, more exciting drivers and like Fred said, the team’s nationality plays no role. We have an American team since a long time, we need to have a good points system that we attract more drivers from the US, that we make them eligible for a Super Licence. We need to support young drivers like Logan Sargeant to give them enough time. Because like we’ve seen with Fernando in Spain, you’ve got a race at the front. If you’re not racing at the front your fellow countrymen are not going to follow. These are the things we have to do. And if one of the applications has demonstrated to the FIA and to FOM that it is beneficial that they join, we can just stay welcome, you know. At that stage, we have to embrace the decision that’s been taken and say, OK, let’s work on this together.
Q: (Adam Cooper – Motorsport.com) A question for Toto. Some of us went to Red Bull Powertrains yesterday, we saw a lot of your former colleagues working there. How difficult has it been for HPP to replace all those people? And given all the experience that was lost, how confident are you that the company hasn’t been weakened, especially in the context of the 2026 project?
TW: I think what I said before is that it is a very ambitious project with Red Bull Powertrains and a very courageous project. HPP has 1,000 employees and lost some to Red Bull in the same way we lost some to Ferrari, and we lost some to Renault. And indeed, the other way around. You know, we are not bragging about any people that have joined us from Red Bull. I won’t mention any names. We have a constant influx of Red Bull people, as we have from the other teams. I mean, the two of us are often discussing that. So, you know that is happening all the time. And so, the people they’ve hired, we wish them the best. Some of them were retired in our organisation and ended up there in a leading position, but that’s fine. They’ve been given a second lifeline.
Source: FIA.com
