Toto Wolff. Steve Etherington

Despite two difficult seasons and a tough start to the current one as well, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff believes that the team’s mindset is right and things can be turned around.

Wolff understood that adding pressure on his team for the lack of performance was not the right thing to do. He knows and sees that everybody at Brackley is working hard and is keen to improve, and that’s the right way of working.

 “I don’t think that additional pressure on all of us makes it better.

“I think we have a problem with the physics. It is not by lack of trying or by the mindset or the motivation or energies. All of that is there, and I can see the buzz in the organization.

“As racers, when we have such [disappointing] results, you’re feeling down, but we’re trying to change that with the right motivation for the week that comes. That’s why we are believing that we can turn this around. We believe that our organization can dig ourselves out. I’m 100% sure we can.”

Wolff also talked about the fact that there is a lack of correlation between what the simulation says and what the track actually shows. However, he also added that that is not stopping Mercedes from improving and trying to fix the car’s issues.

“We had so many unknowns in the last year. Where we started, we said, ‘Okay this could be a reason’ and ‘This could be a reason’ and ‘This could be a reason.’ And we fixed that.

“I can see from the sensors that we have what we needed. But there is still this behavior of the car in a certain speed range, where our sensors and simulation say this is where we should have the downforce, and we are not having it.

“This team has not been overconfident. We are probably the other way around. We see that glass half empty always. And that attitude stays, but this is also the attitude to fix it.”