Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says this team can benefit from customer team McLaren winning back-to-back constructors’ championships despite beating his factory team.
McLaren took its second consecutive title in Singapore, despite George Russell securing victory for Mercedes. That was only Mercedes’ second win of the year as it has been comfortably beaten by its customer team in the past two seasons, but Wolff says McLaren’s example proves the power unit is not a weak point when his team looks at performance gaps.
“I think such internal competition has its advantages,” Wolff said. “It avoids any discussion about whether the power source is one of the main reasons why the chassis is not so good. Are we putting too much torque on the tyres? Is the handling of the engine good or not? And seeing a team run away with a championship in the last two years like McLaren is just proof that it is possible.”
“That way you look at the car and I think it’s just really good engineering and done in the right way. It’s definitely the benchmark of the last two years.”
The McLaren title came on a weekend in which Mercedes outperformed the constructors’ champions in Singapore. Heading into a double-header that starts this weekend’s United States Grand Prix, Wolff is intrigued to see if Mercedes can maintain the form that has helped it achieve strong results with both cars in the past two rounds.
“We are coming off a strong result in Singapore, taking victory with George and P5 for Kimi [Antonelli]. Not only was that unexpected, but our performance level on Saturday and Sunday showed that it was no fluke,” said Wolff.
“That’s been a bit of the story of the season, where it’s not clear which team will be leading from weekend to weekend. We were also good in Azerbaijan, so we’re excited to see if we can keep up the progress we made with the W16 into this next series of races across America.
“These two street circuits are very different layouts and challenges, so we’re going into the unknown a bit, but that unpredictability is what makes our sport so much fun.”
Mercedes go to COTA second in the Constructors’ Championship thanks to Russell’s win in Singapore, 27 points ahead of Ferrari and 35 points ahead of Red Bull in the battle for second place.
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