Wolff acknowledges: 'We thought this concept worked, but it didn't'

Mercedes fell hard off its pedestal in 2022. After seven years of being absolutely dominant and narrowly losing the win to Max Verstappen in 2021, the German team was nowhere near as strong in 2022 as in previous years. The only win of the season came in the penultimate race when George Russell won the Brazilian Grand Prix.

At the time, the win was met with loud cheers from Mercedes and was seen as a sign that the improvements over the course of the season were finally paying off. Now, however, Wolff argues that the victory created false expectations among the team. As a result of the victory in Brazil and the good performances in Austin and Mexico around the same time, the team thought that the design was working well enough that, with some tweaks, it would be able to return to previous levels of success in 2023.

Wolff acknowledges reality

It is now clear that this is not the case. Aston Martin has passed Mercedes in many ways and Red Bull is even further away than it was before. Wolff calls it a perfect storm to create the wrong picture. "We thought we were on the right track and the concept works, but it didn't. And this year, the second year into the regulations, there's a lot of evidence about what went wrong," the Mercedes team boss said.