Q&A TOTO WOLFF

Mercedes team boss

Mercedes came to Canada expecting to win at a track it considers its own. Instead, team boss Toto Wolff said “we have to wake up” after Lewis Hamilton lost the lead in the world championship to Sebastian Vettel.

Mercedes has been dominant in the past, but there is a new dynamic now. How does that feel?

There’s not really a pattern. On some tracks we were dominant but then others we struggled. The margins have become so tight – five cars within a tenth. This is why this year’s championship is going to be decided by the ones who make the least mistakes and bring the best development on every single weekend. That is the new reality. It’s a three-way fight, six cars can win races.

Are you worried that more errors are creeping into the team due to more pressure?

You need to get the right balance between pushing development very hard and adding performance to the car and keeping reliability. This team has been extremely strong in the past at keeping the reliability at high levels. That is not a part that worries me. It is more that we have seen that Ferrari was the stronger car. Stronger in qualifying, stronger in the race. At no time did we have a real chance to fight for the win.

Did you have high expectations coming here?

We came to Montreal expecting our car to be really strong and we are leaving seeing we haven’t been where we thought we should be. I still think we are not pretty good in Monaco or Singapore, that may be the odd outlier, but you need to expect people to be strong everywhere.

Are you confident everything is now sorted on the upgraded engine you didn’t bring here?

I’m the opposite of confident. I think this is – and we’ve had it in the past – a major wake-up call for every single member of the team. Everybody needs to assess how to improve performance in order to optimise those marginal gains because they are going to make all the difference.