General
Message Mercedes for Ferrari: "Not only be fast, also score points"
- GPblog.com
Toto Wolff knows what it takes to win a world title. As Mercedes team boss, he captured at least one world title in Formula 1 every year between 2014 and 2021. The 50-year-old Austrian is watching with interest the reliability problems at Ferrari and the impact that has on the standings in the world championship.
Reliability is incredibly important in Formula 1, because your biggest competitor can just run 25 or at worst 26 points out of the race. Wolff has some (unsolicited) advice for Mattia Binotto's team. "You always need to be on your toes with reliability because you need to score the points and not only be fast, I mean, I feel for the Ferrari guys because they have a super-powerful engine and a good car, but in the end, losing so many points makes you lose the championship."
What Mercedes excels at this year, is not yet spent on Ferrari: maximizing points. The German formation managed to grab four podiums in eight Grands Prix, while the W13 is actually not fast enough at all. For Ferrari, the motto is to simply finish races. "It is important to consolidate and make sure that you are no worse than third. If they drop the ball often then we are there", Wolff is quoted as saying by The Mirror.
Mercedes is on Ferrari's heels
To say that Mercedes still has a serious chance of winning both world championships is perhaps an exaggeration, but what is striking is the small gap towards Ferrari in second place in the constructors' championship. After eight Grand Prix weekends, the difference is 38 points. Looking purely at the speed of the F1-75, that gap should have been at least two and maybe three times as large.