Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, Monza, 2018

Wolff ‘proud’ of Mercedes gains despite losing out on pole

2018 Italian Grand Prix

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Toto Wolff says he is ‘proud’ of the performance gains that Mercedes have made since the Belgian Grand Prix, despite being beaten to pole position by Ferrari at Monza.

After Ferrari locked out the front row of the grid for the Italian Grand Prix with Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel beating Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, Wolff says he is still satisfied with the improvements Mercedes have made to their car over the week.

“Even if it sounds a little bit surprising, I am happy,” says Wolff.

“I’m proud about the step we have made with the car and with the engine from Spa to Monza. We have really tried to unlock all potential we had in the car and bring it to Monza. From what I’ve seen the development step that we made from Friday to Saturday – we’ve put a car on the track that, at least for Lewis, worked well today.

“We had solid engine power and we did what we could. As things stand, it was not enough to beat Ferrari for pole position.”

Hamilton and Mercedes currently lead both the drivers and constructors championships, but Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel have begun closing the gap with victories in the last two races. Wolff says Mercedes are concentrating on their race performance.

“This championship goes for eight more races, the points are won on Sunday and we just need to fight for every single race weekend,” says Wolff.

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5 comments on “Wolff ‘proud’ of Mercedes gains despite losing out on pole”

  1. Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel have begun closing the gap with victories in the last two races.

    Are you sure?

  2. Should of won the last 3 but definitely have not won the last 2.

  3. This is one of the rare occasions when I’d love to see the old qualifying format where each driver was out there completely on their own. If you took away the single / double / triple tows that different drivers had, which car & driver combo would come out on top? And could any of them beat the old lap record without a tow?

    I suspect it would be very close between Ham and Vet in that scenario. Maybe Vet shading it by a tenth, of both had good clean laps.

  4. It’s great that we are to the point in the championship that an engine war is occurring. In the past Merc seemingly just turned up their current spec motor with no effort at all because everyone else was so far behind they didn’t need to push the motor. Now Merc has to push it to the limit or get left behind because Ferrari has found something big on the motor development front and their chassis side as well. This is great for the fans, I personally am enjoying it.

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