© Sebastian Kawka for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ltd.
Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff attended the Spanish Grand Prix Friday Press Conference. Here is the full transcript.
Q: Alright. That’s enough from me. I’m sure there’ll be more for you in a moment. Toto, can we come to you now, please? Pole position and a podium in Canada. Are Mercedes back in business?
Toto WOLFF: You know you skipped Fred? He’s getting a bit upset about that. I think you need to be careful to praise the day before the evening. We had really good steps since Imola. We’ve been able to add performance and we’ve maintained that direction. And I think we all got a bit surprised about the potential on Sunday in Montréal. But having said that, it’s a very specific track. So I think hopefully performance is going to continue to improve, so that we can match these guys in the front. But we know it’s never linear. You know, it’s zig-zagging a bit.
Q: In what areas has the performance upswing come from?
TW: Since Imola, we’ve brought upgrades to every single race, smaller and bigger ones. So, you know, there’s the odd thing that’s visible where people talk about and the other things that are not. But it was aero and it was mechanical. And I would say that on the mechanical side, we’ve seen that the car is very good over bumps and kerbs. The ride is very smooth. And I would say that all of these marginal gains have contributed to better lap times.
Q: Can we talk drivers now? There’s been a recent amendment to the FIA sporting regulations with regard to the minimum age of drivers in Formula 1. What does that mean for Kimi Antonelli this year?
TW: That means nothing. I think the FIA has taken a standpoint saying we don’t want to have a hard limit on a particular age because it could be the fact that young men could be fast-tracked if their success is outstanding. So in a way, that wasn’t lex Antonelli. That was more to change something in the regulations in the World Motorsport Council that anyway was in the discretion of the President before. For us, it doesn’t make a big difference. Kimi is doing F2, he’s doing the TPC testing, he’s learning, he’s developing, he’s making mistakes, all of that together, and that is the current status. So that wasn’t an acute need to put him in a car.
Q: Does this allow you, though, to give him an FP1 session at the very least?
TW: We could give him FP1 sessions after his 18th birthday anyway, which is right after shutdown.
If you like SilverArrows.Net, consider supporting us by buying us a coffee!
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (David Croft – Sky Sports F1) Good afternoon, gentlemen. It’s a question for Bruno, but I would like the thoughts of all our panel on this one, as custodians and senior representatives of your teams. How comfortable are you that a man who was initially banned from Formula 1 for life, albeit overturned from a lifetime ban, has now been appointed to a senior role within a Formula 1 team and is allowed to come back and work for a team in the sport?
TW: I think we need to give the chance to recover from these situations. I have known Flavio as an extremely smart businessman. He has a lot of know-how in Formula 1. Every input that I got over the last 10-plus years that I’ve been in much more contact – and I have a friendly relationship with him – was in a way helpful. There is a lot of experience and expertise that, like Bruno said, 40 years of Formula 1 do. And I think everybody deserves the opportunity to come back. And for me, for sure, having another clever mind in Alpine, someone that is able to simplify things and apply common sense, is in any case, where Alpine is today, is a benefit.
Q: (Ian Parkes – New York Times) Question for you, please, Toto. You’ve mentioned that you’ve brought updates since Imola onwards. Why not here? Because this is a renowned track for the testing of parts. Are you just trying to find a baseline now with what you’ve brought over the last four grands prix? And specifically with regard to the front wings, Helmut Marko said that he noticed on television that those front wings were flexing quite considerably. One would assume that you’re happy with the legality? They’ve been checked etc. etc?
TW: We brought parts, quite a bit to this race, but maybe not the visible ones. So I think in that fight, you need to add performance every single Grand Prix. And even if it’s just a few milliseconds here and there, but we brought parts. In Formula 1, everybody jumps to a conclusion and says, I’ve seen that front wing and those side pods and those deflectors. Front wings play a big role today. It’s clear. Aero elasticity plays a big role, but so do the floors. I think it’s always the combination of these. You can have a front wing that flexes like a banana and passes the test, but the rest of the car just doesn’t work properly in the interaction. I think everybody’s trying to push the boundaries and within the regulations. And I think what we’ve been able to do over the last three races is particular on the right side, where we believe that we’ve made a big step and all of the aero bits that came since then, and maybe we’ve just been very much on the other end of where we should have been on wings and floors and all of that.
Q: (Phil Duncan – PA) Toto, can I get your response to this email that was sent to you and to other members of the paddock claiming that Lewis’ car is being sabotaged? It’s said to be from a member of your team.
TW: Yeah, so it’s not from a member of the team. When we are getting these kind of emails, and we’re getting tons of them, it is upsetting, particularly when somebody is talking about death and all these things. So, on this particular one, I have instructed to go in full force. We have the police inquiring it. We are researching the IP address. We are researching the phone, all of that, because online abuse in that way needs to stop. People can’t hide behind their phones or their computers and abuse teams or drivers in a way like this. I don’t know what some of the conspiracy theorists and lunatics think out there. Lewis was part of the team for 12 years. We have a friendship. We trust each other. We want to win this. We want to end this on a high. We want to celebrate the relationship. And if you don’t believe all of that, then you can believe that we want to win the Constructors’ World Championship. And part of the Constructors’ World Championship is making both cars win. So to all of these mad people out there… take a shrink.
Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Toto, I want to ask you about Fréd, actually, just to put you on the spot. What have you made of the job he’s been doing so far at Ferrari? And how has the dynamic between you guys been? Obviously, friends before, but the rivalry between Mercedes and Ferrari has been so fierce in the past, and particularly with some of Fred’s predecessors, but how has it been between you guys in the past 18 months or so?
TW: Fred and I have been friends since the early 2000s, when he was just setting up his Formula 3 team and I was looking after a few of these young drivers and we’ve gone back a long way and the friendship is tight and the trust is there, and nothing’s going to change that, ever. We have a more intense rivalry, so there’s a few things maybe which we don’t share with each other anymore. We’re both emotional people, so sometimes those emotions can boil up, but we understand each other, that we just have to do the best for our teams, and that may sometimes go against the other team. But that is the nature of the job. I think it would be wrong for me, and patronising, for me to say whether the job is good or not, that he’s done. From the outside, what I see is the team seems to be much more structured, a no bullshit approach. And Fréd has always been that. You can’t tell him a story because he’s going to see through it. And there is a reason why the team has started winning races and competing for a Constructors’ and Drivers’ World Championship.
Q: (Jon Noble – Motorsport.com) To Toto and Fréd, I know Bruno says the engine situation for ‘26 is a rumour, but there’s obviously a possibility they could go down the customer route. If there was a possibility of supplying another deal, is it something you would be open to for ‘26, or is that door shut?
TW: I think most of all, Bruno and Flavio and Luca are in the process of assessing how the 2026 package looks like. And there is nothing we can say or involve ourselves in that. I’ve seen the rumours. I’ve seen the chats that are going on. But at that stage, Alpine needs to take their decisions. And we are on the outside of that.
Q: (Giles Richards – The Guardian) A question again for Toto. Just to come back to this email. The tone of the email was very similar to that of a lot of social media now, which has turned very toxic and very poisonous towards Mercedes. So I’m wondering two things. What has been the reaction within the team to that? And I should add that it all seems to be coming from fans of Lewis that are doing this on social media. So what has been the reaction of the team and indeed what has been Lewis’s reaction to seeing this coming from his own fans?
TW: So first of all, I’m not reading any comments. I don’t have social media. And I think it’s important to protect oneself by doing so. And I’ve commented about this many times before, there will always be people that have their laptop on the chest in their bedroom and just typing away. And if people feel like they’re abusing, want to abuse and hit out and hide behind a made-up Instagram account or anything else, that for me is… Come up, say who you are, and we’ll take the criticism and discuss, but don’t hide. And there seems to be lots of irrationality also, because we want to be successful. We want to be successful with the most iconic driver the sport has ever had. The privilege that we had to work with Lewis as an incredible driver, a great personality, that goes through the ups and downs like any other like any other sports person. I totally respect the reasons for him going to Ferrari. There is no grudge. There is no bad feeling. The interaction we have in the team is positive. And so every comment from the outside of what is going in the team is just simply wrong. But there’s always a limit. I mean, if emails are being sent or telephone numbers are being used for these messages, then for me, the joking stops. And we will pursue it, whether that is successful or not. But there are limits to certain things. And obviously, online abuse is not only something that happens to us or to the team or to the people, it happens badly to Lewis, badly to Lewis, and to George. And therefore, people should, and we’ve seen Max speaking out about it and Kelly. People that abuse are cowards, because they hide. So whatever is going on out there with social media, with all the good things that it provides, and all those people that have been given a platform, that’s just the negatives that come with it. I have no feelings to someone that abuses for the reasons I just said before.
Frederic VASSEUR: Yeah just on this one, and I’m putting my relationship with Toto aside, how you could imagine that a company with 1,500 people working night and day, pushing like hell to bring upgrades, and for you it’s not enough, but bringing upgrades each races, we could kill one of our cars or damage one of our cars? This is completely irrational and nobody in the paddock could do something like this. We are fighting for the championship. Each weekend we are trying to score one point more than the other one. How you could imagine that we say ‘OK, that Lewis, we don’t want to score points anymore with him’. For me it’s completely irrational and completely out of the scope of the person who are doing my business.
Source: FIA.com
