The team’s performance in Abu Dhabi, the season’s last race, displeased Toto Wolff and the whole Mercedes staff. The team’s response to the majority of the races during the 2022 season was the same.
Wolff believes that their vehicles’ speed was insufficient to compete with the Red Bulls and Ferraris. Toto referred to the race at the Yas Marina Circuit as an “exact summation of the season” because their performance in Abu Dhabi was comparable to many previous races this year. Wolff stated to Sky Sports:
“All the faults you can make, such as driving a car slower than you should have. Today’s third-fastest vehicle had one car break down and another run out of tyres. Here we are, and that was a succinct assessment of the season.”
Mercedes battled for speed all weekend in Abu Dhabi after the outstanding performance in Brazil. They were just the third quickest during the qualifying session, according to Wolff.
Both drivers started the race in positions P5 and P6, however, things did not go well since Lewis Hamilton was forced to abandon his vehicle on lap 56 due to shifting problems.
Due to this, the team’s primary rival in the season’s standings, Ferrari, gained significant ground on them.
Mercedes admit: “At least the correlation is decent. We anticipated Abu Dhabi was going to be a difficult one for the vehicle.”
Hopes were high for Mercedes supporters after George Russell won his first Formula 1 race in Brazil. Toto Wolff did, however, say that the team was previously aware that the vehicle wouldn’t be running well at the Yas Marina track.
It was a little too late in the season to recognize that this is one of the steps in understanding the automobile.
We anticipated Abu Dhabi would be challenging for the vehicle, but at least the connection is positive, added Wolff.
Toto thinks that early in the race when they were launching attacks to gain in front of the pack, tyre deterioration was too great. However, Hamiton lost a lot of time due to having to allow Carlos Sainz to pass him after their collision on the first lap in the chicane between turns 6 and 7.
Hamilton was left out in order to maintain the track position while Russell was pitted twice.
That did not work out well for him, though, as he began to lose time as a result of what he called a “power issue,” as he described it on the team radio. He soon fell well behind Sainz and was forced to abandon the vehicle as a result of shifting problems.
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