Toto Wolff: I am never confident of Mercedes' performance
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted that according to simulations, Mexico was their best chance of winning a race. He, however, also revealed that he's never really been sure of the car's performance this season.
Heading into the 2022 F1 Mexican GP, the Silver Arrows claimed that the race was going to be the team's best opportunity to fight for a win. The race weekend did feature a competitive Mercedes but they were once again trumped by Red Bull and Max Verstappen.
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When asked by RacingNews365 if Mexico was the team's best opportunity to win a race, the Mercedes boss admitted that was the case but also revealed that he was proud of how the team was able to compete with Red Bull. He said:
"On the simulations, it says yes [this was our best chance to win this year]. But we see the tendency that we are able to compete and I'm really proud of the team with what we did this weekend. We experimented with a lot of things - the engine guys pushed the boundaries to really give us maximum performance so I think it will be a mix between trying to maximise [this year] and trying the most for next year."
Two rounds to go. P2 in the Constructors' still in sight.
Let's keep up that chase, Team. 💪 https://t.co/ItW2KotRN4
He added:
"I am never confident, I always see the glass half empty, so there is nothing really to see that's positive. There's no reason to be overwhelmed finishing second and fourth, but we have a long way to catch up. We have the winter and I think we're doing some good development on the car and some of the biggest steps might be more than just adding a few points of downforce. We're giving it whatever we have and more in order to bring us back in a position to fight for a championship."
Mercedes could have had a better race in Mexico
In the team's 2022 F1 Mexico GP debrief video, chief strategist James Vowles claimed that Mercedes could have had a better result if the team did not get boxed into changing for hard tires to maintain track position. In the video, he explained:
"We had two choices: let [Sergio] Perez effectively undercut us but go long and then fit the Soft tyres or stop, and given the length of stint the Hard would have been really the tyre that could have made it, the Soft would not have made that level of stint. We decided that track position was more important at that stage and furthermore we had some data from [Nicholas] Latifi that had already stopped and Hard wasn't terrible."
He added:
"So we opted to stop, put Lewis [Hamilton] on the Hard tyre and go to the end of the race under the hope that potentially [Max] Verstappen was going to drop off that Medium curve much as we did see degradation at the end of our stint."
Many thought Mercedes could have challenged Red Bull better had the team used a different strategy. Red Bull's aggression, however, did appear to be the differentiating factor between the two teams.