© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Toto Wolff reveals a stakeholder asked Mercedes if they are “changing the concept”, and he replied with a question: “What does ‘concept’ mean?”
There has been a lot of talk about Mercedes’ 2022 car ‘concept’, which is has been described by observers and the media as being faulty.
It’s an easy conclusion to come to if one considers how much problems the team faced with their car throughout the year. However, Toto Wolff doesn’t think it should be such an easy assumption to make.
When Auto Motor und Sport told Wolff that FC Bayern Munich would have started from scratch, if they had a bad season, he said this is not necessarily what Mercedes must do.
“Revolution is not necessary if you understand where to start,” the Austrian said.
“I don’t know how much it compares to a football team. In general, the point is that stability and a safe environment are enormously important in Formula 1. That is precisely our strength. That’s what made us learn faster in 2022.
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“I think we already have to change some things where we found they didn’t work. We had a discussion with a stakeholder. He asked us: ‘Are you changing the concept?’
“My answer was: ‘What does concept mean? Does it refer to what is visible from the outside – narrow or wide sidepods? Or does concept mean differences in the architecture, in the weight distribution, with the aerodynamic window?’
“In other words, things that are not visible. There is no sacred plan with us. We mercilessly question everything.
“If we had to do something that looked like another car, we would do it without a doubt. At the moment, everything is going in the direction of things that take place under the bodywork.
“That can and hopefully will contribute to our performance getting better again.”
Toto then explained how important the 2022 Sao Paulo Grand Prix 1-2 was to assure the team that they were going in the right direction.
“The victory was certainly important in confirming our development direction. We believe that before the summer we understood where we were going wrong.
“That’s not something you can change from one day to the next. You need many months of lead time. We have clearly seen a trend for the better.
“On tracks that suit the configuration of our car and the aerodynamic properties. That was already good in Austin and Mexico, and even better in Brazil.
“By winning, we were able to tick off this item on our list as well. No one can say that Mercedes didn’t win a race in 2022.
“And not only did we win it, but we won the sprint and finished first and second in the Grand Prix. That was not a fluke this weekend.
“We probably could have won a few more races if we had either made fewer mistakes or had a bit more performance,” Wolff concluded.
