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Wolff expected Red Bull to take a worse beating:"We still got off to a good start"
- GPblog.com
Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas set the second and third fastest times respectively on the Paul Ricard circuit in qualifying. Toto Wolff isn't happy about it but would have expected Sergio Perez to be ahead of them too. There's still a chance of victory on Sunday, but the team boss is a little gloomy about it.
"We still got off to a good start, I would say", Wolff is quoted by the likes of Motorsport-Magazin. The Austrian is tough on his own team: "We just weren't fast enough - we have to analyse that now, this is a circuit that should suit us."
Red Bull seemingly at an advantage
Remarkably, Mercedes actually needed an extra warm-up lap throughout qualifying to get the tyres operating in the right window. "We never managed it on the first run, it always took an extra one. We have to analyse where the bottleneck is," said the top man, predicting a victory for Verstappen without saying it out loud. According to Wolff, Red Bull is faster in the long runs and has more top speed.
The 2018 and 2019 editions at Paul Ricard were dominated by Mercedes on both Saturday and Sunday, but this season it will be harder than ever to complete the hat-trick. "We just need to see some wins in every area. There's not one part we're not looking at to improve our game," he concludes his story to Sky Sports.