Toto Wolff’s explanation
“Updates will arrive in Malaysia”. Toto Wolff – perhaps playing mind games? – postponed to October the last ace still up Mercedes’ sleeve to counter the chase from Ferrari and McLaren.
Read more Tech3, Viñales is still out. Pol Espargaró will also race in Aragon
As Andrea Kimi Antonelli pointed out, Mercedes is no longer the best car in the field and the Italian driver will have to grit his teeth in September at Monza, the MadRing, and Baku. Introducing updates on such particular tracks would not have been easy nor probably fruitful anyway.
What leaves us quite perplexed is the pace of Mercedes – and also Red Bull – which does not seem to be ‘in line’ with that of Ferrari and McLaren. The Woking and Maranello teams are continuing to innovate the SF-26 and the MCL40 unlike the rival teams.
Read more Martin: “Happy to debut with Aprilia at Aragon, I am working well with the team”
Toto Wolff explained the difference in ‘pace’ in terms of updates like this: “Did we spend too much at the start of the season? No – said the team principal – we are simply a team with a certain ‘size’ in terms of personnel and with a certain infrastructure. We are paying dearly for reliability problems that have cost us between 50 and 100 points, with those we would have a wider safety margin. Anyway, we will continue to operate as we had planned in terms of managing the financial resources available.”
Read more Alesi: “Hamilton’s complaints are out of place, Ferrari is Ferrari and deserves respect”
