F1 News
Wolff looks ahead: 'It's not all roses'
Lewis Hamilton (12) and George Russell (14) could not impress during the first free practice for the British Grand Prix. According to Toto Wolff, Mercedes' team boss, there was a specific reason for this: Namely, Mercedes did not use the soft tyre in the opening session, unlike the competition. " It is difficult to estimate [where we stand], but that is not important," Toto Wolff said after the free practice session.
In Austria, Mercedes had a bad weekend. Whether it will be better this weekend at Silverstone remains to be seen. "These cars, not only for us, but for everyone, are unpredictable." Wolff continued. "We've seen other teams, for Ferrari or Aston Martin, also having these outliers, even within Red Bull, Checo has been in and out. So yeah, we very much hope that this was a track that was an outlier for us, but you know, it's not like we're going here with super high expectations and it's all full of roses. It's not. We still need to improve the car."
Wolff sent Pitt on driving lessons
Next to Mercedes' pit box this weekend is the box of Brad Pitt's team. The actor is shooting a feature film about Formula 1. Hamilton and Mercedes are involved. "Yes, we've been involved pretty early and I think we went ahead the first discussions we sent Brad to a driving school in France, going through the formula cars from Formula 4 all the way up and I think that was important and we tried to be helpful with the narrative."
Hamilton is an executive producer on the project. "Lewis is an executive producer so he wanted to make sure that when the movie comes out it's as realistic as possible. I think it's a very very good narrative and then the Fred's idea I think to use an F2 car and build the bodywork around it that looks like an F1 car and then the garages and the pit wall all of them we tried to be helpful and give them the designs."