Toto Wolff Shares 'Good News' For Mercedes Fans Following Miami Grand Prix

F1
Friday, 10 May 2024 at 10:00
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Toto Wolff (Mercedes team principal) discussed where his team stands after the sixth round of the 2024 season at Miami International Autodrome.

Although it wasn't anything special, the Miami Grand Prix was Silver Arrows' second most successful Grand Prix race of the 2024 season.

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell brought home P6 and P8 for their team. The German team seemed to have made progress, but the trouble is that they still suffer from inconsistent car performance.

Evaluating the race weekend in the end, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff suggested a couple of positive takeaways from Miami.

"The good news in our race today was that, like-for-like on the medium tire, we showed that we had good speed."
'Lewis was faster than [Sergio] Perez in the Red Bull ahead on the same compound but wasn't quite able to make the overtake. I think the car is not bouncing anymore, which is good. It was really bad the last few years here."

On the one hand, there are some positives; on the other hand, the German team isn't where they would like to be in terms of performance.

What might be encouraging for Mercedes is that their customer team, McLaren, shows there is no problem with Mercedes' power unit and that significant development steps forward are possible.

McLaren was the worst team in Miami last year, but one year later, the Papaya team won the race and even beat the leading Red Bull on pure race pace. Wolff added:

"The car is very strong at high speed, the ride is a bit better. We're not on the level of the other ones, the car just doesn't turn at low speed."
"You don't want to have a car that is either good at high speed or low speed, you need the two of them, and that's why it points in some of the right direction. It has been a painful learning curve and it's still not satisfactory but the situation is more encouraging now."