Whether it was the pairing of Ferrari and Michael Schumacher, Mercedes, and Lewis Hamilton, or currently Red Bull and Max Verstappen, Formula 1 is no stranger to times when a certain driver-team pairing utterly dominated the sport. And whenever a team starts to stretch too far ahead, resistance comes naturally from other teams who are on the receiving end of said domination. However, Mercedes team boss, Toto Wolff, who himself has enjoyed such a period with Lewis Hamilton, refuses to push for a change in regulation in order to slow down Red Bull.

The 2022 regulation changes set the stage for Red Bull‘s dominance, and Wolff is determined to avoid falling into the same trap faced by Christian Horner, who, in the early turbo hybrid era called for regulation changes to increase competition and excitement in the sport. According to Wolff, Red Bull deserves to be appreciated for the job they have done in the past couple of seasons and the engineering prowess of Adrian Newey.

Toto Wolff believes in giving credit where credit is due

Despite improvements from Ferrari, Red Bull’s position at the top remains unchallenged, with consecutive 1-2 finishes in the opening two rounds of the 2024 season. In a recent statement, Wolff urged a focus on performance improvements rather than regulatory changes. During the media rounds after the Saudi Arabian GP, Wolff acknowledged Red Bull’s exceptional performance over the past two years but stressed the need for Mercedes to remain focused and avoid becoming complacent.

In reflecting on the situation, Wolff is mindful of the lessons of the past. “I don’t want to fall in the trap of my fellow team principal from next door who in 2014 or 2015 said we should change the regs because it is too dominant. I think they have done by far the best job of all the teams over the last two years. Credit where credit is due,“ Wolff told the media.

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“They are literally disappearing in the distance as they want and there is nobody else close. They have the Ferrari today, with Leclerc a little bit and if Sainz would have been here they would have been second-best on the road. But there is not this huge performance differential with everybody that follows up and down depending on the track. It is just that they are in a different league. Our sport is an honest sport and best performance is being rewarded from machine and man.”

Apparently, Mercedes has fallen into a different kind of trap, something they faced during the 2022 season when the data from the simulator didn’t produce on-track results.

Wolff sheds light on the simulator correlation problem

The 2024 Formula 1 season has been a bumpy ride for Mercedes so far. Initially, things seemed promising after a decent performance in pre-season testing and Bahrain. However, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was a wake-up call for the Brackley squad. After a disappointing result, Toto Wolff came forward with a candid admission: they’re grappling with a problem in their simulator. What’s concerning is that the numbers they’re seeing in simulations aren’t lining up with what’s happening on the racetrack.

“It’s just the high-speed variant where we are losing the lap time,” said Wolff. “There is only so much you can tune here. Our simulations point us in a direction, and this is the kind of set-up range that we then choose… It’s a more fundamental thing that we believe the speed should be there. And we measure the downforce, but we don’t find it on the lap time.”

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Can Mercedes cut their losses and find the right developmental direction for the rest of the season? Share your thoughts in the comments down below.