© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
After Lewis Hamilton qualified in P16 for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says “it’s just not an option to stay where we are”.
At the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Qualifying, Mercedes had one of the worst qualifying session of recent years, with Lewis Hamilton managing only P16, while George Russell got P6.
Toto Wolff says Mercedes’ current performance is “totally unacceptable”.
“I love competition, I always love competition,” the Austrian said.
“We had a really strong run of eight years leading the pack, not always but we kind of managed our way into the lead.
“But this time feels a bit like 2013 where we just weren’t up to the speed of the Red Bulls and probably also the Ferraris.
“We kept fighting and this is how I feel at the moment. We need to fight. It is certainly totally unacceptable where we are on performance.
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“We are third on the road, and sometimes not even, like today. It’s just not an option to stay where we are.”
Wolff also confirmed the problems with Lewis’ car were due to a late set-up change.
“You can see between Lewis’ and George’s performance there was not huge set-up changes that happened.
“But they were big enough to have dramatic consequence of the performance of the car, between going out in Q1 and making it solid into Q3.
“That’s why this car is tricky to set-up, we had a lower drag rear wing, toom the gurney off but still it wasn’t enough to shave more drag off the car, but generally I would say this isn’t a single problem.
“We have many parts of the car that don’t work, that we don’t understand, they don’t perform enough, and this is not where we all expect the car to be,” Wolff concluded.
