It is time for the Mercedes AMG F1 team to buckle up, bring it’s ‘A game’ and win the race at the Chinese Grand Prix, says team boss Toto Wolff.
The W09 is supposed to be the fastest car in the 2018 gird. But Ferrari outsmarted the German outfit in the season’s first two races. In the Australian race, Sebastian Vettel made the best use of the Virtual Safety Car period to emerge ahead of Lewis Hamilton and won the race. At the Bahrain grand prix, Vettel switched strategy to a single pitstop after his teammate retired and stayed at the lead until the end of the race.
Speaking about the team’s chances at the Shanghai race, Wolff emphasised on learning from the past mistakes and being perfect in its next race. The threat from Ferrari is now real, so there is no scope for any more screw-ups.
“This is not the start to the 2018 season we had hoped for,” Wolff said. “For two races in a row, we did damage limitation with one car and lost the win with the other. Both races were decided by fine margins – but that doesn’t make it any better. In fact, it probably makes it more frustrating.
“The competition is extremely close in 2018 and Melbourne was already a strong reminder that there is absolutely no margin for imperfections or mistakes in this year’s title fight. While we saw a completely different race in Bahrain and lost for different reasons, the message stayed the same: In order to win this year, we need to bring our A game.”
Mercedes has won every grand prix at Shanghai since the beginning of the Turbo Hybrid era. Chinese GP is the season’s first back-to-back race, and it is the best place to “right the wrongs”, says Wolff
“We started to analyse what went wrong in Bahrain in order to improve for China and come back stronger. We’re quite happy that this is a back-to-back race as that means that we won’t have to wait long to get racing again.
“Shanghai has been a good track for us in the past, so hopefully we will get the chance to right some of the wrongs of the past weeks and show a performance that is worthy of Mercedes.”
