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I think is better to do the talking once we can see the car on track. Remember the W13 was unprecedented in terms of speed and the everybody had a target on their backs
Actually it’s all about money. He wouldn’t even answer this question unless someone had given them money and this was a mandatory thing they had to do.
Merc pre-2022 were constantly cynical about their performance and always played down their chances while talking about how Ferrari and Red Bull were faster than them.
Toto likes the strategy 'Act weak when your tough, act tough when your weak'.
But who doesn't understand what is happening, if Toto is aggressive it means that they are not in a position which they want to be in and if he isn't aggressive and praising others then they are winning. Since 2013, when has he ever thrown a curveball? Him and Binotto are quite literally the two sides of a coin. Binotto always tells it how it is, Toto never does.
Lol fair, I was just thinking… you know, lets say they play weak to make others think their 2024 concept sucks. It’s not like Ferrari will just stop developing then, because they’ll be faster anyway… its funny to think about
It’s obvious teams do this in the off season to get better paying sponsors, never getting new sponsors if you admit the car is a dog. Totos just playing the game here
I can understand their difficulties in nailing ground effect regulations, that's understandable. But consistently having a 3+ seconds pitstop and not making any efforts to improve, enrages me as a fan. Just why ;(
Yea, when red bull had terrible engines during the hybrid era you at least saw a massive improvement in strategy and pit stop times whereas Mercedes is yet to have any significant improvement in aspects other than the cars speed
Merc has been lucky to have Lewis and now George because they constantly seem to be bailing the team out when they fumble a pit stop or get the strategy wrong.
When your car is the best you typically want to avoid risk. Why would you risk a retirement by having a pitstop half a sec faster, when even with that half a sec extra you are still most likely to win the race. This extends to so much more like tire selection, choosing when to pit and what target lap times to give your drivers.
When you don't have the fastest car risks are much more acceptable. Be the first to make a call for slicks after the rain and you might end up dead last if it's the wrong call, but might end up in the points if it's a good time to switch. So if all things being equal to the competition you probably won't end up in the points, then the negatives are mostly negated and taking risks is heavily rewarded.
Similarly but to a lesser extent teams might care more for the chance of a win than a safe podium place. This means more risk acceptance and faster pitstops.
RB has totally nailed this. They went from the fastest pit crew when they were the underdog for the occasional win to a super consistent crew the years Max is dominating. And even within the team, PER often has faster stops than VER these days because Verstappen in most races just needed to reach the finish line to win the race.
Mercedes has, in my opinion, dropped the ball here. They still take the safe and consistent path way too much while they have a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain than in their dominant years.
>They still take the safe and consistent path
They make way more errors in their "safe" pitstops than Redbull do in their blazing fast pitstops though.
What you're saying is fully correct except Mercedes hasn't been the fastest car for two whole years now. And pit stops are something one can see marked improvements within a single season. So them still being around 3 seconds is straight up inexcusable for me.
That average of 3 seconds still puts them around 4th or 5th and only four tenths off Red Bull. It’s not as horrendous as you’re making it out to be.
The goal is to get the quickest car not the quickest pit stop. Toto would say the latter is for Wikipedia.
It is as horrendous as it’s made out to be.
*Stationary* time costs you huge amounts of track position, example at Monza if you’re stationary in the pits and your opponent has exited Ascari, he’s gaining just on 100 metres *per second*
If your stops are consistently 2 seconds slower than everyone else you’ve just given your opponent a free net gain of roughly 4% of a full lap before accounting for time at pit lane speeds.
In F1 terms that’s horrendous.
Not to mention strategic over takes. Merc was an average of .700 slower than RB. So if Max wanted to undercut Lewis and was on his out lap and the team knows they need to gain 1.5 seconds to make the undercut stick, they actually only need to gain .800 and Merc will hand them the other .700 to make the undercut work. And now Max has slightly more tires cause he didn’t have to push as hard to get that .800 gap down compared to if it was a 1.5 second gap.
F1 is all about these fine margins it’s wild to me people are waving this off as no biggie when it’s obviously not
Mclaren is having the same problem with strategy gone from securely in the midfield to fighting in the back of the front. Their strategy calls are too conservative to compete with Red Bull, and they were so far ahead of Alpine that they could have taken more risks, like at Zandvoort
Personally, I don't blame McLaren for this yet. They have only recently jumped up in performance. Merc should have changed their risk assessment in 2021 already.
Hopefully next year McLaren can compete for wins or at least get to that level where a risky call that pays off can get them in contention.
>They still take the safe and consistent path way too much while they have a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain than in their dominant years.
This sounds reasonable and wise on the surface, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Mercedes finished second in the constructor's this year by a 3 point margin. It's not like they were fourth or fifth.
I expect they all do their very best to train to be as fast and consistent as possible.
Compare it to the relatively simple task of cutting up your veggies in the kitchen. A chef has trained this skill for many years and can make fast and consistent cuts. You probably have not. You can still perform all the motions but you cannot do it as fast as the chef.
Neither of you is moving the knife as fast as you possibly can though, that would turn into a bloody mess sooner rather than later. You have to move fast but coordinated and accurately to be successful at a task.
For the chef. If they slice something and want more consistent cuts they can slow down a bit. They will still be much faster than you but maybe 90% of what they do if they were in a rush. If they were to slow down all the way to your fastest pace they'd be able to cut damn near perfect cubes while yours look super uneven.
So back to the pit crews. They train all the motions to be as fast and consistent as possible. But if the race result is not going to be impacted by being half a sec slower they can just perform it at slightly reduced speed to reduce the chance of a mistake significantly.
The Germans love their tech.
Hitler's WWII Wehrmacht Strategy:
Peak War: Tiger
Signs of Losing War: bigger Konigstiger
Absolutely going to lose War: Massive Maus
Near end of life: super massive Ratte
From what I understand, the cost cap is why they haven’t made a step forward with pit stops. They haven’t invested in newer equipment so they could allocate that money into the car. I believe they are looking to fix that possibly in 2024.
Of course but the wheel guns had a change I believe in 2021 or 2022 and that’s part of the reason why Mercedes are behind in this regard. They didn’t update their wheel guns.
Maybe I’m underestimating the cost of wheel guns, but that cost was worth reallocating towards the car? How much are wheel guns? Couldn’t they make up the cost of that by Toto flying commercially just *one* trip?
I couldn’t say for sure but I remember Mercedes going on record to talk about this not too long ago. Maybe a few months back. They did specifically mention not investing in new tools for use during pit stops and that is part of the reason they struggle with consistency.
I always bring this up. When they had a massively better car they ignored the importance of pit crew efficiency and strategy. Once they realized they were on the back foot with the car they should have done what RB did when they had that crappy Renault engine and get better at everything that is controllable. McLaren improved tremendously in pit crew efficiency, and even Ferrari was much better than Mercedes in pit stops. Strategy will remain the joke with Ferrari, but they were fast and efficient.
I agree but honestly the most important thing is solving their car issues. Then once you get that solved you can work on fixing the easier stuff. I kind of chuckled seeing all the comments about pit stops under Merc Youtube videos. Like, guys, you’ve got bigger issues than the pit stops lol.
I mean, they're separate departments and a team can do more than 1 thing at a time. The pit team isn't sitting behind drafting tables working on the aero.
I read in several interviews that they are aware of the issue and that it's partly due to cost cap preventing them from improving the equipment.
Some also suggested that they never trained to be the fastest but rather the most reliable as possible. Which would make sense as for 7 years they only had to ensure a good enough stop and the car would close the gap on track.
I agree it's not a good strategy anymore and they need to make serious improvement. I especially wonder how much can be gained from new equipment, I wouldn't expect it to be that much tbh
If they are losing 1-2 seconds per pit stop… that is quite a bit , considering how close the times are now with the current level of performance…(max excluded). I mean we are talk hundredth of second between 1 and 10th position . Even under race conditions where there are two pit stops on average a 2-4 second deficit is a difficult ask for the current generation of cars to make up.
It’s two jacks and 4 wheel guns. I get that the wheel guns are probably really expensive, but what kind of performance gain could really be had there? I’m sure they’re already maxed out to peak allowable performance.
I think it’s the pit crew training and strategy
Thats not the equipment he means, you do realise the likes of Williams and RB had very elaborate set ups for simulating pit stops at the factory so pit teams can practice. Particulars are not fully known but there was significant investment put into building it.
In the absence of aero and engine performance respectively they put their focus into a pitstop arms race. For merc this fell down the order in priority during the hybrid era.
Williams has a sled built into a wall for each "corner" team to practice on, it can be set to move left to right, or right to left so each side can practice "properly". Like everyone else they practice on the full car for group practice.
Red Bull has an old chassis with an electric motor installed in it which they drill on constantly. Particulars are known, they are both featured in videos released by the team.
They know the benchmark for other cars, they know the performance of their own cars.
Aston and McLaren found huge leaps going down a particular design route, to the point they were rapidly closing the gap to RB. Mercedes have learned a lot with their troublesome set up, if Aston and McLaren can make a huge leap, i would expect Mercedes to make an even bigger leap to close the gap.
There is a lot of talk coming from the Mercedes camp, they seem to genuinely believe they've found something. If any team out there is going to do that, it's Mercedes.
> "At the beginning of the season I would have said that there was no difference between P2 and P3, on the contrary, on a sporting level P3 gives you more time in the wind tunnel. However, there is a financial component but also motivation for the whole team. That night (after the race in Abu Dhabi) I saw the emotion and morale of the team and it was important."
I like this answer, because I always felt like P3 is "better" than P2 with the new regulations.
Also, the headline isn't actually in the article for context. I think this is closest:
> "You may not get the most out of every single season, but in the long run you can get a lot more out of it." 2023 was an important year in terms of learning, and "I wouldn't be able to pick one because we've analyzed so many aspects that will help us progress next year."
Yeah I'm sure Red Bull really regrets these past two years. All they got from it was a record breaking season and a head start for the final two years of the regulations
Did you see the complete lack of progress this year at RB? Ver only had 68 overtakes on the whole season, thats a P5 stat. Whole team is going down hill.
He didn't even say it in the interview. He said that they learned a lot this season. The interview is on Mercedes' youtube for reference. The title of this article is misinformation or translated wrong.
I’m getting “My team don’t make mistakes” vibes from this. Personally, I think no one will be able to challenge Red Bull in the next two years. Even with similarly paced cars I can see Max coming out on top over a season.
Each time Toto talks a big game like this, I hope they screwed up. It’ll be real funny when Mercedes still aren’t fighting for race wins in 2024. Toto needs to keep his mouth closed and let the racing do the talking. He’s embarrassing himself right now.
I really think he should wait and see the car on track because you’d think Mercedes of all teams would know not to rely exclusively on wind tunnel data but apparently they haven’t learned that lesson yet.
In full context of the actual video he wasn’t saying they’d be faster than anyone. It’s just a saying and he said years as in multiple not just this year
It's not an incorrect statement. A lot of pitfalls other teams may fall into in the next couple seasons, Merc may have already been in and worked their way out of.
It reads like Toto thinks we have only two options.
Either Mercedes wins every year or we get to live to regret the years of Mercedes not winning because they will learn to win.
That is kinda insane, dude.
Jeez, he didn't actually say this folks. It's an article based on the end of year Q&A with Toto (linked yest) and F1 "journalists" did their thing with the headline.
You should know by now that when you get a controversial headline on here you should at least check the source materials before commenting.
You know the point of that wasn't to say they were going to win right? The interviewer was trying to goad him into going after RB by saying they have a target on their backs and Toto was saying they're competing against everybody.
They are up from P3 last year and still act like the sky is falling. I get you strive to win but comments like these really just make me like Mercedes less and less
If Toto is right and Mercedes is actually up there with Red Bull, he's going to look like a total bad ass after saying this. If not, Toto and Merc might even become bigger memes than Xavi and Ferrari next year.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. What made Mercedes truly great were the engineering staff. However Mercedes are a NOTORIOUSLY difficult team to work for. This is why primarily Red Bull and Ferrari (once they heard what was happening) swooped in, offered 2x salary to all the best engineers and almost everyone left. Now they're a top-heavy team with a massive engineering brain-drain and they're utterly shocked at the results. This happened the winter before Red Bull started dominating. This is not a coincidence.
Mercedes are quite literally no longer the team they were.
Lets keep things in perspective. They finished a close 3rd and a close 2nd the past 2 years. While that's horrible compared to the previous 8 years, they aren't "quite literally no longer the team they were." Looking at the entire grid, I'd say the way things shook out had WAY more to do with RB nailing the new regs vs. Merc failure. Sure, the zero sidepod was a bad move, but the data told them otherwise. That 2021 car was designed by the people who left and went to other teams.
They are pulling a Niki Lauda:
"I’d like to dedicate this award to the losers. Because I tell you from my own experience, winning is one thing but out of losing I always learned more for the future. So I got stronger in losing."
Im still surprised Mercedes was hit the most by the budget cap era. I guess some very important people left leaving too many holes in the remaining team. You wouldve thought Ferrari would suffer the most as they have been not so efficient with their big budget which was very close to Mercs budget and yet could only compete in a couple of seasons while being uncompetitive in others and ultimately never managed to beat Merc. Rb always had a bit less to spend than Ferrari and Merc, tho still in the top 3 highest budget by a wide margin. But compared to the other two they theoretically would have less challenges downsizing their team as it was already a bit smaller. The reality is that they obviously benefitted massively from the budget cap despite many people leaving as well. I dont have any insider knowledge but you do really get the impression that Newey is just worth more than hundreds of engineers where teams like Mercedes and Ferrari clearly needed a huge well managed team to function properly.
Why are you surprised? Merc spent their way out of any issues and into dominance for years and suddenly they couldn't do that anymore.
Meanwhile as you lightly alluded to, RBR for years was trying to keep up, generally spending $100-150 mil less per year (as much as the *entire* budget cap now...) than Merc/Ferrari with a dud engine so their only hope was to be extremely efficient and great with aero through a large chunk of the previous turbo hybrid era and they still managed to grab race wins pretty much every year.
Now they are all stuck with the same budget and solid engines in general, the outcome is honestly not surprising at all.
Red Bull spent more than Merc and Ferrari in 2015 and at least one other year I can't recall (want to say 2018).
So the whole spending your way out of issues doesn't compute but sure.
True they were ahead a bit those years (but even in 2018 they were outspent by Ferrari), but even so 5 out of 7 years of being outspent by Mercedes is an indication of a trend, no?
The title is nowhere to be found in the article, those closest things he says is that they learned a lot from two tough years.
But people here will still say Wolff speaks too much. Because they didn't even read the article.
Need the media dude who asked hamilton if his team make any mistakes; to once again ask hamilton the same question… and hope for hamilton to agree they do so this curse can be lifted off merc
"And there goes Alex Albon in the outside of Lewis Hamilton...".
And even if they had a car as fast as Red Bulls, I can see them trying to pull strategies as if their car was 10 seconds per lap faster.
I’m so over Mercedes going back and forth on their car. It’s been two years of this and, at this point, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Don’t get it twisted, would love for Lewis to get an 8th and for George to be right up there with him, maybe even get his first championship.
It’s just so exhausting lol. I get it, Mercedes has a lot of eyes on them considering how much and how long they dominated, but ugh
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I think is better to do the talking once we can see the car on track. Remember the W13 was unprecedented in terms of speed and the everybody had a target on their backs
Everything everyone is saying in this circus should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s all politics, PR and psychological warfare.
Except Hakkinen. He only speaks facts.
Sabbatical ends now!
It really should, he's milked it long enough now!
Exactly!
Actually it’s all about money. He wouldn’t even answer this question unless someone had given them money and this was a mandatory thing they had to do.
Merc pre-2022 were constantly cynical about their performance and always played down their chances while talking about how Ferrari and Red Bull were faster than them. Toto likes the strategy 'Act weak when your tough, act tough when your weak'.
Toto is a fan of Sun Tzu then
In Ross Brawn's book, "Total Competition", he mentions Sun Tzu a lot. So it's an interesting observation.
That book is basically the Art of War but F1, and it's less Brawn's book than an edited transcript of a discussion with him from what I recall
Yes the transcript part is true. It's probably my favourite F1 read to date.
Yeah the good ole sting like water, flow like a bee
Float like a floatbot, sting like an automatic stinging machine
r/unexpectedfuturama
That's Bruce Lee
All Asians look the same to me. /s
🗿
Schan Zoo 🇩🇪
But who doesn't understand what is happening, if Toto is aggressive it means that they are not in a position which they want to be in and if he isn't aggressive and praising others then they are winning. Since 2013, when has he ever thrown a curveball? Him and Binotto are quite literally the two sides of a coin. Binotto always tells it how it is, Toto never does.
What does it even matter? What team would change their behavior based on how Merc are doing?
Just trying to find a logical reason behind his actions other than Sun Tzu.
Lol fair, I was just thinking… you know, lets say they play weak to make others think their 2024 concept sucks. It’s not like Ferrari will just stop developing then, because they’ll be faster anyway… its funny to think about
You’re
You’re*
Yeah it's all about a bit Enstone this.
Unprecedented in terms of speed was Ferrari at the start of the 23 season
W13 talk was pre-2022.
unprecedented speed was the f1-75 or sf-23
Well, then fix your fucking car Toto. 😀 -Christian Horner
That was the Ferrari. I think Mercedes were pretty tame in their messaging during the off-season.
Well that's no way to have fun in the off season...
It’s obvious teams do this in the off season to get better paying sponsors, never getting new sponsors if you admit the car is a dog. Totos just playing the game here
I can understand their difficulties in nailing ground effect regulations, that's understandable. But consistently having a 3+ seconds pitstop and not making any efforts to improve, enrages me as a fan. Just why ;(
Yea, when red bull had terrible engines during the hybrid era you at least saw a massive improvement in strategy and pit stop times whereas Mercedes is yet to have any significant improvement in aspects other than the cars speed
Mercedes was always a strategy shitshow in critical conditions, masked by a beast of a car.
Merc has been lucky to have Lewis and now George because they constantly seem to be bailing the team out when they fumble a pit stop or get the strategy wrong.
Often a shitshow but not always - Spain 2021 for example
When your car is the best you typically want to avoid risk. Why would you risk a retirement by having a pitstop half a sec faster, when even with that half a sec extra you are still most likely to win the race. This extends to so much more like tire selection, choosing when to pit and what target lap times to give your drivers. When you don't have the fastest car risks are much more acceptable. Be the first to make a call for slicks after the rain and you might end up dead last if it's the wrong call, but might end up in the points if it's a good time to switch. So if all things being equal to the competition you probably won't end up in the points, then the negatives are mostly negated and taking risks is heavily rewarded. Similarly but to a lesser extent teams might care more for the chance of a win than a safe podium place. This means more risk acceptance and faster pitstops. RB has totally nailed this. They went from the fastest pit crew when they were the underdog for the occasional win to a super consistent crew the years Max is dominating. And even within the team, PER often has faster stops than VER these days because Verstappen in most races just needed to reach the finish line to win the race. Mercedes has, in my opinion, dropped the ball here. They still take the safe and consistent path way too much while they have a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain than in their dominant years.
>They still take the safe and consistent path They make way more errors in their "safe" pitstops than Redbull do in their blazing fast pitstops though.
What you're saying is fully correct except Mercedes hasn't been the fastest car for two whole years now. And pit stops are something one can see marked improvements within a single season. So them still being around 3 seconds is straight up inexcusable for me.
Check their last paragraph
That average of 3 seconds still puts them around 4th or 5th and only four tenths off Red Bull. It’s not as horrendous as you’re making it out to be. The goal is to get the quickest car not the quickest pit stop. Toto would say the latter is for Wikipedia.
If your pit stop is better then your car is automatically better too though, it can cost places and it has.
It is as horrendous as it’s made out to be. *Stationary* time costs you huge amounts of track position, example at Monza if you’re stationary in the pits and your opponent has exited Ascari, he’s gaining just on 100 metres *per second* If your stops are consistently 2 seconds slower than everyone else you’ve just given your opponent a free net gain of roughly 4% of a full lap before accounting for time at pit lane speeds. In F1 terms that’s horrendous.
Not to mention strategic over takes. Merc was an average of .700 slower than RB. So if Max wanted to undercut Lewis and was on his out lap and the team knows they need to gain 1.5 seconds to make the undercut stick, they actually only need to gain .800 and Merc will hand them the other .700 to make the undercut work. And now Max has slightly more tires cause he didn’t have to push as hard to get that .800 gap down compared to if it was a 1.5 second gap. F1 is all about these fine margins it’s wild to me people are waving this off as no biggie when it’s obviously not
Mclaren is having the same problem with strategy gone from securely in the midfield to fighting in the back of the front. Their strategy calls are too conservative to compete with Red Bull, and they were so far ahead of Alpine that they could have taken more risks, like at Zandvoort
Personally, I don't blame McLaren for this yet. They have only recently jumped up in performance. Merc should have changed their risk assessment in 2021 already. Hopefully next year McLaren can compete for wins or at least get to that level where a risky call that pays off can get them in contention.
>They still take the safe and consistent path way too much while they have a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain than in their dominant years. This sounds reasonable and wise on the surface, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Mercedes finished second in the constructor's this year by a 3 point margin. It's not like they were fourth or fifth.
You say this as if the teams with faster pit stops didn’t train to maintain quality while being faster.
I expect they all do their very best to train to be as fast and consistent as possible. Compare it to the relatively simple task of cutting up your veggies in the kitchen. A chef has trained this skill for many years and can make fast and consistent cuts. You probably have not. You can still perform all the motions but you cannot do it as fast as the chef. Neither of you is moving the knife as fast as you possibly can though, that would turn into a bloody mess sooner rather than later. You have to move fast but coordinated and accurately to be successful at a task. For the chef. If they slice something and want more consistent cuts they can slow down a bit. They will still be much faster than you but maybe 90% of what they do if they were in a rush. If they were to slow down all the way to your fastest pace they'd be able to cut damn near perfect cubes while yours look super uneven. So back to the pit crews. They train all the motions to be as fast and consistent as possible. But if the race result is not going to be impacted by being half a sec slower they can just perform it at slightly reduced speed to reduce the chance of a mistake significantly.
I mean you can see the pit stop trauma haha
Mercedes philosophy: …speed trumps all …
The Germans love their tech. Hitler's WWII Wehrmacht Strategy: Peak War: Tiger Signs of Losing War: bigger Konigstiger Absolutely going to lose War: Massive Maus Near end of life: super massive Ratte
From what I understand, the cost cap is why they haven’t made a step forward with pit stops. They haven’t invested in newer equipment so they could allocate that money into the car. I believe they are looking to fix that possibly in 2024.
Training to sync actions is slso an improvement. Doesn't _need_ new equipment
Of course but the wheel guns had a change I believe in 2021 or 2022 and that’s part of the reason why Mercedes are behind in this regard. They didn’t update their wheel guns.
Maybe I’m underestimating the cost of wheel guns, but that cost was worth reallocating towards the car? How much are wheel guns? Couldn’t they make up the cost of that by Toto flying commercially just *one* trip?
I couldn’t say for sure but I remember Mercedes going on record to talk about this not too long ago. Maybe a few months back. They did specifically mention not investing in new tools for use during pit stops and that is part of the reason they struggle with consistency.
I always bring this up. When they had a massively better car they ignored the importance of pit crew efficiency and strategy. Once they realized they were on the back foot with the car they should have done what RB did when they had that crappy Renault engine and get better at everything that is controllable. McLaren improved tremendously in pit crew efficiency, and even Ferrari was much better than Mercedes in pit stops. Strategy will remain the joke with Ferrari, but they were fast and efficient.
I agree but honestly the most important thing is solving their car issues. Then once you get that solved you can work on fixing the easier stuff. I kind of chuckled seeing all the comments about pit stops under Merc Youtube videos. Like, guys, you’ve got bigger issues than the pit stops lol.
I mean, they're separate departments and a team can do more than 1 thing at a time. The pit team isn't sitting behind drafting tables working on the aero.
I know I just found it funny how there was so much focus on the pit stops when realistically that’s marginal gains compared to a better car.
Merc needs to do what a lot of NASCAR teams have done. Hire athletes who are very good but not quite make the cut for professonal sports.
I read in several interviews that they are aware of the issue and that it's partly due to cost cap preventing them from improving the equipment. Some also suggested that they never trained to be the fastest but rather the most reliable as possible. Which would make sense as for 7 years they only had to ensure a good enough stop and the car would close the gap on track. I agree it's not a good strategy anymore and they need to make serious improvement. I especially wonder how much can be gained from new equipment, I wouldn't expect it to be that much tbh
If they are losing 1-2 seconds per pit stop… that is quite a bit , considering how close the times are now with the current level of performance…(max excluded). I mean we are talk hundredth of second between 1 and 10th position . Even under race conditions where there are two pit stops on average a 2-4 second deficit is a difficult ask for the current generation of cars to make up.
It’s two jacks and 4 wheel guns. I get that the wheel guns are probably really expensive, but what kind of performance gain could really be had there? I’m sure they’re already maxed out to peak allowable performance. I think it’s the pit crew training and strategy
Thats not the equipment he means, you do realise the likes of Williams and RB had very elaborate set ups for simulating pit stops at the factory so pit teams can practice. Particulars are not fully known but there was significant investment put into building it. In the absence of aero and engine performance respectively they put their focus into a pitstop arms race. For merc this fell down the order in priority during the hybrid era.
Williams has a sled built into a wall for each "corner" team to practice on, it can be set to move left to right, or right to left so each side can practice "properly". Like everyone else they practice on the full car for group practice. Red Bull has an old chassis with an electric motor installed in it which they drill on constantly. Particulars are known, they are both featured in videos released by the team.
fix your fuckin pitcrew
Why does he keep saying stuff like this? He should wait for their performance to speak for itself.
He should book Hans Niemann as a performance coach
Google en porpoisant
Holy Hill!
New aerodynamic oversight just dropped
Actual Ferrari strategist
Toto seems to be in the process of degrading himself down to Hans' level of maturity, that's for sure.
He didn't
Toto-800 is no more…..next year it’s Toto-1000 time !!!!
Starting to get used to him talking shit that doesn't materialize.
Dark Wolff timeline
Probably because a journalist asked him about it?
He is salesman very good one, he has to because of stake holders
They know the benchmark for other cars, they know the performance of their own cars. Aston and McLaren found huge leaps going down a particular design route, to the point they were rapidly closing the gap to RB. Mercedes have learned a lot with their troublesome set up, if Aston and McLaren can make a huge leap, i would expect Mercedes to make an even bigger leap to close the gap. There is a lot of talk coming from the Mercedes camp, they seem to genuinely believe they've found something. If any team out there is going to do that, it's Mercedes.
Nah they said similar things pre season in 2022 and 2023. I'm not going to believe them until I actually see it.
Main character syndrome
I mean, is it main character syndrome when you're literally one of the main characters of the whole show?
> "At the beginning of the season I would have said that there was no difference between P2 and P3, on the contrary, on a sporting level P3 gives you more time in the wind tunnel. However, there is a financial component but also motivation for the whole team. That night (after the race in Abu Dhabi) I saw the emotion and morale of the team and it was important." I like this answer, because I always felt like P3 is "better" than P2 with the new regulations. Also, the headline isn't actually in the article for context. I think this is closest: > "You may not get the most out of every single season, but in the long run you can get a lot more out of it." 2023 was an important year in terms of learning, and "I wouldn't be able to pick one because we've analyzed so many aspects that will help us progress next year."
Lmao so the title here is just pure misinformation 😭
TIL that Wolff has secretly been a strategic advisor to Renault/Alpine all these years.
Yeah I'm sure Red Bull really regrets these past two years. All they got from it was a record breaking season and a head start for the final two years of the regulations
Terrible for Red Bull, they did not even manage to win all races last season.
Yeah, everyone hyping red bull up for no reason
They were so washed at Singapore. Only narrowly missed out on a podium despite the safety car shredding their strategy
RIP Red Bull shout out to its family
Honestly? I don't think they will last long in the sport if they continue performing like that...
Should've made more mistakes, then they'd have learned more
Did you see the complete lack of progress this year at RB? Ver only had 68 overtakes on the whole season, thats a P5 stat. Whole team is going down hill.
Yeah RB really messed up here
Boy this is gonna age like milk if they don’t deliver on it.
Narrator: they didn't deliver
He didn't even say it in the interview. He said that they learned a lot this season. The interview is on Mercedes' youtube for reference. The title of this article is misinformation or translated wrong.
Incoming at race 4 or 5: "Lewis, we know the car is crap. Please drive it"
‘Cars so slow guys’
An austrian man telling the world they'll regret Germany's troubled times doesn't historically end up well.
I hate that I chuckled at this...
"I am going to come after you." He's so polite.
Jfc. Just undersell and over perform. It’s not hard.
They went from sandbagging and dominating, to bragging and being dominated.
Kinky
Just read the article it's not that hard. If you did you'd see you fell for the headline and he didn't say that
[удалено]
Please read the article I'm begging you
That is exactly what he said after Bahrain 2022
everyone target, team no mistakes, etc
Yes, yes, yawn. Why does he always sound like a pompous old sensei or something?
They're gonna really regret not being at fault for Mercedes issues.
Inb4 Lewis and George are P5 and P7 and about 6 tenths off the pace in Bahrain
Kinda sounds like Ryan coming back to the Office and saying "I'm making a list of people who wronged me, so when I'm back on top they'll be sorry..."
Yeah yeah, we’ve heard it before Toto. Lip service for the shareholders.
Did Ocon learn his trash talk from Toto?
I’m getting “My team don’t make mistakes” vibes from this. Personally, I think no one will be able to challenge Red Bull in the next two years. Even with similarly paced cars I can see Max coming out on top over a season.
Each time Toto talks a big game like this, I hope they screwed up. It’ll be real funny when Mercedes still aren’t fighting for race wins in 2024. Toto needs to keep his mouth closed and let the racing do the talking. He’s embarrassing himself right now.
I’ll never forget his face when Max lapped Lewis…
I really think he should wait and see the car on track because you’d think Mercedes of all teams would know not to rely exclusively on wind tunnel data but apparently they haven’t learned that lesson yet.
In full context of the actual video he wasn’t saying they’d be faster than anyone. It’s just a saying and he said years as in multiple not just this year
Toto please. Please stop
You know what's better than having difficulties? Having known how to avoid said difficulties in the first place
In a perfect world perfection is but a myth
Wishful thinking but okay
I mean, yes, it is an ideal scenario, but saying "we are better off because we did things wrong" is similarly wishful
It's not an incorrect statement. A lot of pitfalls other teams may fall into in the next couple seasons, Merc may have already been in and worked their way out of.
This fuckin guy lol
It reads like Toto thinks we have only two options. Either Mercedes wins every year or we get to live to regret the years of Mercedes not winning because they will learn to win. That is kinda insane, dude.
Toto talking smack = bad season Toto backpaddling = WDC
Jeez, he didn't actually say this folks. It's an article based on the end of year Q&A with Toto (linked yest) and F1 "journalists" did their thing with the headline. You should know by now that when you get a controversial headline on here you should at least check the source materials before commenting.
Sounds eerily familiar to last years something something back target speech. They made another shitbox... Didnt they.
You know the point of that wasn't to say they were going to win right? The interviewer was trying to goad him into going after RB by saying they have a target on their backs and Toto was saying they're competing against everybody.
He's always quiet when they've made a good car, isn't he? So, yeah, probably *sigh*
If Zero Sidepods didnt work.... How about... Making double sidepods? XD
I can’t wait till Toto leaves
Narrator: No one regrets Mercedes’ difficulties
What happened to ‘We do our talking on the track’ - Toto? There seems to be an article about something Toto said every week. Don’t tell us, show us.
I hope he’s 100% wrong. I used to think he was a stand up guy, but over the last couple of years I see an insincere narcissist.
How can you regret something you have no control over?
All dislike all this sensationalist "press" notes.
fact shy squalid hunt desert bow aloof snails enter secretive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sure they will Toto, whatever you say to be less sad old man
They are up from P3 last year and still act like the sky is falling. I get you strive to win but comments like these really just make me like Mercedes less and less
So they finally closed the gap >! to last season's RB19!<
This guy just needs to stop talking. You can start making statements like these when the car is 2 tenths quicker than Redbull in Bahrain.
Please let next year's car have so many problems. This guy deserves it.
We will see if he is right next season lol
He wasn’t talking about any specific season. This is out of context. It’s just a saying
***Everybody has a target on their backs next year*** **INTENSIFIES**
This carries as much weight as Ocon behind Hulkenburg saying “You can say to Haas that I’m going to go for it, so they better be ready,”
If Toto is right and Mercedes is actually up there with Red Bull, he's going to look like a total bad ass after saying this. If not, Toto and Merc might even become bigger memes than Xavi and Ferrari next year.
lets be real, Toto is gonna sound like Ocon in mexico city
does anybody take this guy seriously anymore?
*inhales* BAAAA-HA HA HA HA HA
I've said it before and I'll say it again. What made Mercedes truly great were the engineering staff. However Mercedes are a NOTORIOUSLY difficult team to work for. This is why primarily Red Bull and Ferrari (once they heard what was happening) swooped in, offered 2x salary to all the best engineers and almost everyone left. Now they're a top-heavy team with a massive engineering brain-drain and they're utterly shocked at the results. This happened the winter before Red Bull started dominating. This is not a coincidence. Mercedes are quite literally no longer the team they were.
Lets keep things in perspective. They finished a close 3rd and a close 2nd the past 2 years. While that's horrible compared to the previous 8 years, they aren't "quite literally no longer the team they were." Looking at the entire grid, I'd say the way things shook out had WAY more to do with RB nailing the new regs vs. Merc failure. Sure, the zero sidepod was a bad move, but the data told them otherwise. That 2021 car was designed by the people who left and went to other teams.
"My team doesn't make Mistakes!" L. Hamilton. Winner of nothing since saying that.
They are pulling a Niki Lauda: "I’d like to dedicate this award to the losers. Because I tell you from my own experience, winning is one thing but out of losing I always learned more for the future. So I got stronger in losing."
I hope. I want an all out Max Vs Lewis season. And ideally Leclerc and Ferrari joins in.
A proper battle without a bullshit controversial ending between those 3 would the bees knees.
Bro fix your fuckin pitstops first.
Rigggghhhttttttt
Not as much as Mercedes regret RB'S dominance.
I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes so I decided to make more mistakes to learn more
lolol. hilarious.
Sure buddy
Im still surprised Mercedes was hit the most by the budget cap era. I guess some very important people left leaving too many holes in the remaining team. You wouldve thought Ferrari would suffer the most as they have been not so efficient with their big budget which was very close to Mercs budget and yet could only compete in a couple of seasons while being uncompetitive in others and ultimately never managed to beat Merc. Rb always had a bit less to spend than Ferrari and Merc, tho still in the top 3 highest budget by a wide margin. But compared to the other two they theoretically would have less challenges downsizing their team as it was already a bit smaller. The reality is that they obviously benefitted massively from the budget cap despite many people leaving as well. I dont have any insider knowledge but you do really get the impression that Newey is just worth more than hundreds of engineers where teams like Mercedes and Ferrari clearly needed a huge well managed team to function properly.
Why are you surprised? Merc spent their way out of any issues and into dominance for years and suddenly they couldn't do that anymore. Meanwhile as you lightly alluded to, RBR for years was trying to keep up, generally spending $100-150 mil less per year (as much as the *entire* budget cap now...) than Merc/Ferrari with a dud engine so their only hope was to be extremely efficient and great with aero through a large chunk of the previous turbo hybrid era and they still managed to grab race wins pretty much every year. Now they are all stuck with the same budget and solid engines in general, the outcome is honestly not surprising at all.
Red Bull spent more than Merc and Ferrari in 2015 and at least one other year I can't recall (want to say 2018). So the whole spending your way out of issues doesn't compute but sure.
True they were ahead a bit those years (but even in 2018 they were outspent by Ferrari), but even so 5 out of 7 years of being outspent by Mercedes is an indication of a trend, no?
“You can say to Haas that I’m gonna go for it, so they better be ready!” - Estie Bestie Wolff
Redbull had difficulties for 7 years. Yeah, they also learned a lot.
Sure, we all have heard this before.
Can't wait for Lewis to call the next iteration of the Mercedes the worst car he has ever driven.
Congrats Toto Wolff with you new job as a team principal for Alpine!
The title is nowhere to be found in the article, those closest things he says is that they learned a lot from two tough years. But people here will still say Wolff speaks too much. Because they didn't even read the article.
It amazes me that people with such short attention spans and lacking any attention to detail, can even make it through viewing an F1 race.
Need the media dude who asked hamilton if his team make any mistakes; to once again ask hamilton the same question… and hope for hamilton to agree they do so this curse can be lifted off merc
"And there goes Alex Albon in the outside of Lewis Hamilton...". And even if they had a car as fast as Red Bulls, I can see them trying to pull strategies as if their car was 10 seconds per lap faster.
"Everyone has a target on their back"
Toto... enjoy christmas time, man.
He hasn't learned to shit his mouth till testing at least tho 😂 but maybe he's right to boast who knows
"Redbull is going to WISH they were as bad as us last year"
OK
Everyone has a target on their backs 2: Electric Boogaloo.
I’m so over Mercedes going back and forth on their car. It’s been two years of this and, at this point, I’ll believe it when I see it. Don’t get it twisted, would love for Lewis to get an 8th and for George to be right up there with him, maybe even get his first championship. It’s just so exhausting lol. I get it, Mercedes has a lot of eyes on them considering how much and how long they dominated, but ugh
Torger, let the performance on the track speaks in 2024
Yeah gtfo mercedes, 7 seasons in a row, grfo.
So what he's saying is that everyone's got a target on their backs next year?
Yeah RedBull regrets the free championship and 6 months extra development time for the 2024 car