Tuesday, November 02, 2021
“Doesn’t do anything”
Mercedes boss doubts Hamilton’s title win
Five races are still pending in the 2021 Formula 1 season. The fight for the world championship is more exciting than it has been in a long time. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff sees his driver Lewis Hamilton lagging behind – but only “purely mathematically”.
The title fight in Formula 1 is inevitably coming to a head. The reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton is twelve points behind the world championship leader Max Verstappen. The Dutchman in Red Bull service is preparing to break the seven-year dominance of Mercedes and prevent Hamilton from making himself from the title shared with Michael Schumacher to the sole record champion of the premier class of motorsport. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff explains in an exclusive interview with RTL / ntv that he sees his driver at a slight disadvantage: “Purely mathematically 45:55” are the chances, “but purely mathematically, there is nothing in motorsport”.
With the Mexican Grand Prix this Sunday (8 p.m. in the live ticker at ntv.de), Hamilton still has five chances to shorten the gap to Verstappen in order to win his eighth world title at the end of the season. However, the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is considered a strong Red Bull circuit, Verstappen won here in 2017 and 2018 with a car that was clearly inferior to the Mercedes. Wolff said: “Mexico is always an exciting race because it is a completely different situation,” said the 49-year-old: “We are over 2,000 meters high there, which means that the setup of the car and the engine is always good everything different. “
The 4.304-kilometer circuit in Mexico City has “not always been a good place” for Mercedes in recent years, explains Wolff, “because we are trying to achieve the best average over the whole year with the architecture of our engine”. The engine, which has been the ultimate in Formula 1 since 2014, should work well on all tracks, from the high-speed track in Monza to the usually slowest race in terms of average speed in the street canyons of Monaco. “And Mexico is an absolute outsider there,” said Wolff. A well-calculated weakness that Mercedes has so far been able to afford without any problems.
Only: This year “everything is different”, as Wolff emphasizes, who once set a lap record for vehicles without turbo engines on the legendary Nordschleife. On the one hand, because with Red Bull and Verstappen there is finally an opponent in the field who continuously challenges Mercedes and consistently punishes mistakes. Verstappen’s World Championship lead is no coincidence, with eight race wins, the Dutchman was three times more likely to be on the top of the podium than Hamilton.
No choice but full attack
On the other hand, according to Wolff, “we have seen that supposed Red Bull circuits have become Mercedes circuits and vice versa”. That was shown by the US Grand Prix in Austin. For the first time in the hybrid era that began in 2014, it was not a Mercedes that won the demanding circuit in Texas, it was Verstappen. A surprise that Wolff is now hoping for in the fifth run of the season: “That’s why we’re going to Mexico and the other races with a clear conscience to perform there too.”
The alternatives are sparse, because “we have no other choice,” says Wolff. The lead in the constructors’ championship (Mercedes stands at 460.5 points and Red Bull at 437.5) is tight, and the drivers are even threatened with a changing of the guard. Mexico is the prelude to a strenuous triple header for everyone involved, because the Grand Prix in the 129 million-inhabitant country is immediately followed by the race weekends in Brazil (Sunday, November 14th, 8 p.m.) and Qatar (Sunday, November 21st, 8pm). November, 3 p.m. / each live in the ticker at ntv.de), only then is there a week to catch your breath.
Mathematically, the Formula 1 premiere in Qatar is also the first race in which the championship decision could be made. In view of the small gaps, however, it is more likely that there will be celebrations at the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia (December 5th / live on RTL) or even at the season finale in Abu Dhabi (December 12th) at the earliest.