It's a long shot, but Mercedes boss Toto Wolff is hoping there's a chance that George Russell and...
The post Wolff hopes Mercedes chargers can 'disappear into the distance' appeared first on F1i.com.
It's a long shot, but Mercedes boss Toto Wolff is hoping there's a chance that George Russell and Lewis Hamilton can stick their nose into Turn 1 at the start of the Mexican Grand Prix, and "disappear into the distance".
Despite their session being far from perfect, the Mercedes pair qualified second and third in Saturday's disputed shoot out, just 0.300s behind poleman Max Verstappen.
But Mercedes' ameliorated pace on race day coupled with the positive effects on its 'draggy' W13 of Mexico City's thinner air is producing a glimmer of hope in the Brackley camp that it can pull off an upset - its first of the season - at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
Wolff isn't dismissing that eventuality, but the Austrian is keeping his expectations in check.
"I think in all my life, there’s only a handful of occasions that I’ve been confident, and never in Formula 1," said Wolff. "So the truth is I don’t know.
"I’m annoyed about not being on pole, because it would have ticked a box, but equally having Max with his top speed advantage behind us would have been a problem tomorrow.
"Starting second and third can be advantageous, and I hope we can stick our nose or both noses into Turn 1 and disappear into the distance.
"But definitely that’s going to be difficult."
Difficult it might be, but Sunday's race in Mexico City is seen as the best opportunity for Mercedes to save its honour.
"The good thing is that in our simulations, we had [Mexico] in a way on the radar as being the best race," Wolff said. "So that is good that it correlates, the virtual world correlates with the real world.
"The most important [thing] is that we really have the pace, and slowly but surely, we are going forward and learning the lessons for next year."
Ironically, while Mexico is favourable terrain for Mercedes this season, it's always been a challenging venue for the Silver Arrows squad historically.
"For many years, Mexico wasn’t a good place for us because of the altitude," said Wolff. "But [the] power unit guys have really given us a super strong engine here.
"We suffered less from our draggy car here, whilst running high downforce like all the others. Generally that has been better for us in the past."
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