Mercedes sees “reason for optimism” at Silverstone
That’s what team boss Toto Wolff revealed after Mercedes didn’t get past P7 and P8 in Spielberg. It was the first race of the year where you didn’t finish at least one car in the top 6.
“We’re happy that after a tough weekend in Austria we can race again straight away. We scored a handful of points, but we didn’t have the pace for much more,” admits Wolff.
“The field is incredibly close behind Red Bull and there are fluctuations every weekend. Part of it is circuit-specific, another part is the upgrade cycle throughout the field,” explains the Austrian.
And that could be an opportunity for Mercedes at Silverstone, because there they will bring new parts for the W14 themselves. “The team has been working hard to analyze our performance and learn lessons from it,” said Wolff.
“We took the result with composure and will try to pick up the momentum that we have built up in the past races. With the next upgrades and experiments that are pending at Silverstone, there is reason for optimism,” he emphasizes.
“Nevertheless, we don’t want to be hasty. We’re concentrating on the task ahead of getting the performance out of the car and we’ll see where we stand this weekend,” said Wolff.
Wolff makes it clear: Engine rules 2026 will remain the same!
Recently, there have been rumors that Formula 1 will have to make further improvements to the engine regulations for 2026. “That won’t happen,” Toto Wolff makes absolutely clear in this context.
“I don’t know why these things are coming up now,” wonders the Mercedes team boss, emphasizing that the rules were developed “over many years” and that all manufacturers were involved. He therefore believes the worries are unfounded.
He describes the critics as “doomsayers” and assures: “These rules will not change anymore. They will no longer be postponed.” It is now important to develop “good chassis regulations”.
fear of protests
Already in 2022 there were protests by environmental activists during the Silverstone race. After Lewis Hamilton recently commented on this, Formula 1 boss Stefano Domenicali has now also made a statement on ‘Sky’.
You don’t want to shut anyone up, he emphasizes, “but doing things that are dangerous and actually destroy an event that hundreds of thousands of people come to is completely wrong,” says Domenicali.
There are other “ways” to protest, but incidents like 2022 are “completely unacceptable,” emphasizes the Formula 1 boss, who also reminds that the premier class is strongly promoting the issue of sustainability itself.
It’s hard to imagine, however, that statements like this could really dissuade activists from protests that may already be planned…
Mercedes invites marshals
You probably still remember the 2022 Silverstone race and Guanyu Zhou’s serious accident at the beginning. Mercedes has now invited the marshals from back then to its own plant in Brackley as a thank you for their work.
As a special surprise, there was a personal meeting with George Russell, who was also acting as a “first responder” at the time. A great gesture from the team!
Brown: Must do a “better job”.
After Spielberg’s track limit farce, the McLaren boss emphasized: “I think we have to do a better job because we knew on Friday that this would be a problem.” Nevertheless, no one reacted to the situation.
The same mistake was made in Spa in 2021. “We knew on Friday that Spa might be a problem on Sunday. And we just watched it develop.”
And another example is Indianapolis 2005. Back then, too, it was known long beforehand that there would be problems in the race – but no solution was found. So Brown sees a fundamental problem in such cases.
Referring specifically to Spielberg, he says that you shouldn’t have another race in which there are suddenly numerous penalties “five hours” after the end of the race. “So I think we need to improve as a sport,” Brown said.
Does Verstappen want to humiliate the competition?
This question came up after the Dutchman made an additional pit stop shortly before the end of the race in Spielberg in order to take the bonus point for the fastest lap with him. Expert Timo Glock has now also commented on this.
“Max Verstappen tried to have the perfect weekend, and he did it. The way he wanted to come into the pits with complete confidence at the end and also trusted his team, that was enormous,” he writes in his new column for ‘Sky’.
“He challenges everyone. If that had gone wrong, he would have ended up being the idiot of the nation,” Glock recalls and explains: “Nevertheless, it also shows how strong Red Bull is. They are very secure in their team structure. The pit stops are incredibly fast.”
“Verstappen ended up setting the fastest lap of the race and didn’t give the competition any hope that there was any chance of taking an extra point away from him. That also has something to do with humiliation,” said Glock.
The Dutchman took the maximum haul of 34 possible points with him on the sprint weekend.
Silverstone good ground for Mercedes
Statistically, Silverstone is one of the most successful Mercedes circuits. The Silver Arrows have won eight of the last eleven races there since 2013.
With eight Silverstone victories, Lewis Hamilton is the most successful driver ever on the traditional track. In 2020 he was even able to win there on three hoops!
But: Recently, the Mercedes dominance at the home race crumbled, Mercedes could only win one of the last three Silverstone races.
More exciting statistics can be found in our large database!
Full throttle towards Silverstone
Hello and welcome to a new edition of our Formula 1 news ticker. It’s Wednesday, and although the Austrian Grand Prix is only just over, the tenth race weekend of the year begins tomorrow with the media day at Silverstone.
So we don’t want to waste any time and in the coming hours we’ll be looking back at Spielberg and ahead at Silverstone, and apart from that we’ll of course provide you with all the important news from the world of the premier class.
Kevin Scheuren is taking a break today, Ruben Zimmerman accompany you through the day instead. If you have any questions, suggestions or complaints, you can use our contact form. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, and if you have any questions, you can also use our Twitter hashtag #FragMST. Here we go!
Here you can read our ticker from yesterday!