Mercedes to avoid making hasty predictions

We’ll go to British GP without any set calculations, says team chief Wolff.

SPIELBERG:

Mercedes head to Silverstone still seeking to shake off the ‘trauma’ of a second place in Canada, even after coming back in Austria this weekend, said team chief Toto Wolff.

The British Grand Prix in two weeks time will be a home race for Lewis Hamilton, who won in 2008 for McLaren, and the track looks to have everything Mercedes needs to secure their eighth win in nine races this season.

But Wolff has warned against making hasty predictions after poor experiences in Belgium, Italy and most recently in Canada, where Mercedes were relegated to second place for the first and only time this season, while Hamilton failed to finish.

“I remember exactly – and I have a trauma from that – when we came to Spa last year, in all the calculations we had said ‘this is the best ever track for us’ and then found out that we were losing lots of speed,” said Wolff.

“Then we said ‘ok let’s go to Monza, we’re going to blow them away with our power there’; however, we weren’t competitive.

“Montreal was again one of those tracks where we said ‘that’s going to be our track’. Oops, here we go, not finishing the race with one car.

“So in theory, Silverstone looks to be easier for us on the brakes and on the energy recovery and the cooling on the energy recovery, than Austria. But I think we have to go there and then see what happens.”

Williams target Ferrari, Red Bull

Sunday’s Austrian Grand Prix has put Williams squarely back among the big boys, with teams like Ferrari and Red Bull now their target after years languishing in the bottom half of the constructors’ standings.

The English team dominated qualifying ahead of the race, with Brazilian Felipe Massa taking his first pole since 2008, and teammate Valtteri Bottas contributing to a front-row lock-out on Sunday.

In the end, they could not keep up with Mercedes leaders Nico Rosberg and Hamilton, but everybody else was in their sights, vowed Massa.

“The result today shows that we can compete with the other teams, we can compete with big teams, like Ferrari, like Red Bull,” he told journalists after his fourth-place finish.

“[Against] Mercedes I think will be difficult, we don’t even have 100 points, they have 300 so we’re not fighting with Mercedes.

“But it shows that we are at a good level.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 24^th, 2014.

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