Toto Wolff told that Mercedes is looking inward for its Formula 1 car deficiencies, which provides Ferrari with performance advantage.
Sebastian Vettel’s victory has raised the bar of performance for Mercedes to keep up its crown. Ferrari’s pace at Belgium have questioned the dominance German team this season.
The quality show that Vettel had put in Belgium is expected in Italy, where the team will enter for GP weekend as most favorite.
Italian manufacturer was considered to have straight line pace advantage, but Mercedes think otherwise. The team considers that Vettel’s dominance over Lewis Hamilton is being driven by multiple areas that needs consideration rather than just pace.
Toto Wolff, Mercedes Executive director, said: “When I look at the race I see many deficits.
“We are a strong team but there are deficits that are obvious and cause us not to perform as we expect.”
He tried to explain multiple dimensions of what was holding Mercedes behind while adding, “You can see the deficits. It is the slow speed, and it is the traction.
“This is what I would summarise as the main weaknesses at the moment.
“Plus clearly, compared to the Ferraris and the Red Bulls and the Force Indias, [we were] the car that was cooking the tyres the most.”
Wolff also made clear that Hamilton’s reference to “trick things” doesn’t suggest of Ferrari’s involvement in any illegal act.
“They [Ferrari] have a power advantage,” he said. “We saw that in qualifying that their power advantage is on various parts of the straight, and you can see that even if the [corner] exits are worse than ours, their engine keeps pulling.
Wolff added, “That is nothing that could be a trick. It might also be related to how you run the engine, how you calibrate it.
“But in the same way, they de-rated earlier in qualifying than we did.
“So yes, we can see that they have a slight power advantage and then you add that to our weaknesses out of Turn 1 especially, and that causes the double whammy.
“If you aren’t very good on traction and you are being outperformed slightly on power then lap one happens.”
Wolff is hopeful to close power gap this weekend without major changes.
“It is all about understanding your power unit and optimising the engine,” he said.
“That is something which doesn’t involve the hardware and this is an ongoing process. So the answer is yes you can find performance.
“There is no silver bullet. We won’t find any performance that is suddenly going to add three tenths to the car, or to the engine, and we disappear into the sunset.”
