Toto Wolff Shares His And Mercedes’ Plight About 2024 Australian GP

Toto Wolff and his Mercedes have clearly seen better days in the sport, a contest that they themselves took to serene and unbelievable heights back in the day. There was a time when winning was their habit and maybe, it won’t be wrong to call it, their second nature.

There are teams that are meant to slog in the midfield and some who just have to play catch up. Mercedes, the mighty England-based Constructor, were neither this or that; they were meant to dominate and with Lewis Hamilton showing immensely rich form back in the day supported ably by Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes found themselves, more often than not, right in the front.

They bashed Ferrari and made reducing McLaren into a mediocre looking outfit a regular customary occurrence. Even Red Bull didn’t stand a chance, particularly if one were to think about their 2017 to 2020 seasons.

But ever since 2021 and with Red Bull picking up mighty form helped further by the maniacal rise of Max Verstappen, Mercedes, who tormented the rest have too often, found themselves tormented.

Fair to speak that way, respected Toto Wolff?

The most recent F1 Grand Prix at Australia was further evidence of just how Mercedes feel in the sport’s top flight.

This race weekend, they had not one but two cars scoring a DNF. While on his part, the true great of the sport Sir Lewis Hamilton suffered mechanical issues in his W15, George Russell survived a scary incident at the very back end of the 58-lap race though not entirely for his fault.

Regardless, Toto Wolff along with his entire team and millions of Mercedes fans experienced an utter lacklustre race weekend at Melbourne, a track where previously Hamilton has clinched no fewer than two wins (2008 and 2015).

Having said that, Wolff minced no words in describing his actual feelings about both the cars exiting the Albert Park but without scoring a single race point. He was of the following view:

“So clearly, we started the season in the belief that this car is better than it was last year. Then you look at last year and look at these guys – Leclerc crashed out and Sainz was fourth and got relegated to outside of the top 10 because of a penalty. [Now], they are 40s ahead of us.

Furthermore, the famous Austrian elaborated, “So, obviously on one side, I want to punch myself on the nose. But on the other side, it is also a testimony of that when you get things right, you can turn it around pretty quickly and you just got to continue to believe. But at the moment it is very, a very tough time.”

He would, also, as a matter of factly, highlight his exact thoughts given the fact that the 2024 Australian GP was anything but an ideal race weekend for his checkered Mercedes team:

“I would be lying if I would say at any moment, I feel positive about the situation and optimistic. But you just need to overcome the negative thoughts and say we will turn this around. But today it feels very, very, very brutal.”