© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff talks about balancing the team’s resources between the current season and focusing on the big rule changes of 2022.
With Mercedes’ battle with Red Bull in 2021 looking to be very close, the team cannot easily switch its resources to the development of its 2022 car.
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said that this season’s battle will come down to “marginal gains”, and Wolff jokes the Briton stole that line from INEOS cycling team general manager Dave Brailsford.
“Christian stole that sentence from Dave Brailsford, the marginal gains,” the Austrian said.
“It is about marginal gains, it’s about eking out in every possible performance area, limiting DNFs, mistakes, and trying to extract every bit of performance that you have in your car and your power unit.
“That’s going to go all the way because I doubt that one of us is going to go extreme in terms of balancing the 2021 regulation versus 2022.
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“You simply can’t let 2021 go, but at the same time, every single week you lose for 2022 is going to cost you immense performance because the development slope is just much steeper than with the mature regulations that we have today.”
So far in 2021 it seems that Red Bull holds the upper hand over Mercedes, at least in qualifying. Wolff went on to explain that Mercedes is making up for it by performing better on race day.
“It’s a fight of the giants. I still have the feeling that we haven’t got the pace on Saturday, but we should, and we seem to be quicker on Sunday.
“And I simply love it,” concluded Mercedes’ team boss.
