06/11/2023
NEWS STORY
Toto Wolff admits to being in shock following the "miserable" performance of the W14 in Brazil just a week after almost winning in Mexico.
The cuts to the Mercedes garage during the race said it all, Wolff staring at the monitor stony-faced as his drivers fought a desperate battle to remain relevant.
Coming just a week after Lewis Hamilton had given Max Verstappen a run for his money in Mexico, it was hard to believe that it was the same car.
Going into the race, Hamilton and his teammate, George Russell, had admitted their fears that tyre deg would be an issue, but even they didn't comprehend how bad things would get, the works Mercedes losing out to customers McLaren and Aston Martin.
Despite a strong start to the race it wasn't long before both drivers began to suffer and while the seven-time world champion hauled his car home in eighth, rising engine temperatures caused Mercedes to retire his teammate just 14 laps from the end.
"An inexcusable performance," Wolff subsequently told Sky Sports. "There are no words for that," he continued. "That car finished second last week and the week before. And whatever we did to it was horrible.
"Lewis survived out there, But, George... I can only feel for the two driving such a miserable thing. It shows how difficult the car is, it's on a knife's edge.
"We've got to develop that better for next year," he admitted. "Because it can't be that within seven days you're finishing on the podium with probably one of the two quickest cars and then finish eighth."
The Austrian believes that the choice of rear wing for Interlagos was largely responsible for the night and day performance compared to Mexico.
"Straightline speed was one issue," he said, "but probably not the main factor. The main factor was that we couldn't go around the corners with a bigger wing with the pace we needed and we were killing the tyres, just eating them up within a few laps.
"We are clearly not the world champions on Sprint race weekends," he added. "We do some good work here on track to get it done. But still, that doesn't explain what went wrong. I mean, that car almost drove like on three wheels and not four."
Another factor, according to Hamilton, was his floor.
"My guess is that the floor's not working," he said. "The floor's just not sucking us down, so that just pushed us to go to a higher wing. And then we're just massively draggy on the straights. We're losing so much time on the straights, there's nothing I could do about it.
"And then we were just sliding through the corners, so we have to look into why that is the case on this rough circuit.
"I knew that we would have a relatively difficult day," he admitted. "Nothing changed in the car from yesterday to today, so I knew it would be a tough one. Yesterday I just ate through the tyres with an unexpected lack of pace. And then I think I drove better today in terms of making my stints, but we were just slower.
"In the moment it is a setback," he admitted, "but as a team, we'll just come together and we'll try and push forward.
"There'll be a lot of analysis this week after today, and I'm sure there'll be things we'll be like, 'Ah, Maybe if we'd done this, it would have been better', but I think still ultimately, the car needs work here for some reason and that's the way it is."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Interlagos City here.