Lewis Hamilton finally given hope again as Toto Wolff’s Mercedes outlook questioned

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff could barely contain his fury and despair as he reacted to Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s ill-fated Brazilian GP weekend.

Naomi Schiff believes Toto Wolff may have overreacted to her Mercedes team’s terrible weekend at Interlagos.
The Silver Arrows left São Paulo with just 11 points thanks to their efforts at the Brazilian GP. They scored seven points in the sprint despite major tire damage, but Lewis Hamilton added just four points in Sunday’s main event and number 039, while George Russell retired with an oil temperature problem.
Speaking later, Wolff reacted emotionally to what he saw. Describing that andquot; unforgivable act andquot;, he said: andquot;There are no words for it. This car finished second last week and the week before and everything we did to it was terrible.
andquot;Lewis got through there, but George… I can only feel for them both, who traveled so unhappily. So it shows how tough the car is, it’s a knife and a blade. Weand#039;ve got to develop it better for next year because with a stable and fast car you can’t be like seven days away from the podium, you’re nowhere. andquot;Weand#039;re clearly not world champions on sprint race weekends. We did a good job here at the track to do it, but that still doesn’t explain what went wrong. The car drove as if it had three wheels instead of four.andquot;

Wolffand’s words paint a bleak picture for Mercedes, not only for the final two races of 2023, but also for next season. However, Sky Sports F1 expert Schiff is not convinced that things are as bad for the team as the Austrian suggested.
andquot;All in all, it was obviously not a great weekend for them,andquot; he told the Sky F1 podcast. andquot;They lacked speed, they clearly used the tires more than most of the teams around them – which is very uncharacteristic of their car. So they didn’t get the tires they wanted, plus they had reliability issues.

andquot;So many things have gone wrong for them. But if you look back just two races, they had two podiums in two races and the car was on a positive track. So I think that even though the result was pretty dramatic for them, it seems like it could be a one-off. andquot;Maybe they know more than we do – they probably do – but at the end of the day, we’ve seen this car well before, as Toto described it, a knife and a knife. edges so that their working window is very narrow. I think given the fact that it was a sprint weekend, it’s possible that they cheated themselves with the setup. I’m pretty sure they’re having great conversations right now.
andquot;But I don’t know if we should take Toto’s reaction with a pinch of salt. I think that was a pretty pessimistic view of a weekend that obviously didn’t go the way they wanted. But are they really in such a difficult situation now? I think recent history shows that they are not in such a terrible place.andquot;