Wolff Dismisses Notion Of Mercedes Being 'Overconfident'

Wednesday, 13 March 2024 at 22:30

Toto Wolff asserted he is 100% sure his team can go back to fighting for the podium and that he is not being "overconfident" in saying so.

Mercedes is currently having a challenging period. Being the third or fifth fastest team on the grid is a dream for some of the other teams in the bottom five, but not for the German team that won eight consecutive Constructors' Championships.

Ever since new regulations were introduced in 2022, Mercedes struggled with on-track data not matching the simulations which suggested their cars should be faster in the real world. As reported by motrosport.com, Toto Wolff said:

"We believe that our organisation can dig ourselves out. I'm 100% sure we can. We had so many unknowns in the last year. Where we started, we said, 'okay this could be a reason' and 'this could be a reason' and 'this could be a reason.' And we fixed that."

"I can see from the sensors that we have what we needed. But there is still this behaviour of the car in a certain speed range, where our sensors and simulation say this is where we should have the downforce, and we are not having it."

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The 52-year-old also said after the second race of the 2024 season that high-speed corners were his team's primary weakness.

Apparently, Mercedes could match anyone in other sections of the Jeddah Corniche Circuit but was the second slowest in the high-speed turns.

This issue was observable on Hamilton's onboard camera as he followed Lando Norris a few laps before the end of the race. The McLaren driver would always pull an immense gap on him during high-speed sections, which he would spend closing up throughout the rest of each lap.

Each time Mercedes delivers an underwhelming performance, they claim they have much more potential in their car and can close the gap to the front.

Many fans grew bored of these statements and started calling the German team overconfident. However, Wolff asserted he doesn't believe that to be the case with his team.

"This team has not been overconfident. We are probably the other way around. We see that glass half empty always. And that attitude stays, but this is also the attitude to fix it."