Toto Wolff makes Mercedes admission after difficult Belgian GP showing

Mercedes team principal and CEO, Toto Wolff, admitted the team’s performances of late have not reached internal standards.

Though he managed a top-five finish, George Russell had dubbed Mercedes’ showing at Spa their “worst performance of the season” as he struggled to break into the top four.

Toto Wolff: Recent Mercedes weekends ‘not up to our standards’

Mercedes currently sits in the chasing pack behind McLaren, though the team has lost ground to Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship of late, falling 28 points behind the Scuderia in the battle for second place.

Russell claimed the team had taken a “step backwards” in performance recently, adding the W16 “isn’t feeling as nice to drive at the moment as it once did, lacking rear stability”, with the team due to discuss its progress ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Wolff said staff behind the scenes at the Brackley-based team are working “flat out” to maximise their potential ahead of the final race before the summer break, but acknowledged recent results have not matched expectations.

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“After a tough weekend in Belgium, we are looking to put in a more competitive showing in Hungary,” Wolff said.

“Our performances in recent races have not been up to our standards, and we have work planned to both understand why that has been and get on top of it this weekend.

“The team has been flat out in the days since Spa to optimise this work as we look to head into the summer shutdown with a positive result in Budapest.”

While part of Russell’s frustration was borne of Mercedes not performing as well as he would have liked in what he considered “ideal” conditions at Spa, he believes the FIA Technical Directive which adjusted front wing deflection that came into effect at Barcelona may have been a root cause of a drop in competitiveness.

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, added the team may be able to adjust parts of the W16 after a meeting with Russell and Kimi Antonelli.

“It depends what extent you’re talking about, but it’s definitely possible for us to look at changing aspects of the car for Budapest,” Shovlin told media including PlanetF1.com when asked about if the team can bring further upgrades..

“How deep we go will depend on what parts we’ve got around us. And as I said, there’s quite a lot that we’ve changed.

“So we’ve got a meeting with the drivers to go through some of what we’ve done over the year to try and make sure that our efforts are focused on the right things, not just changing things for the sake of it.”

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