After finishing the 2023 season without a victory, Toto Wolff and Mercedes faced an incredibly difficult season.
After the Mercedes team failed to win a single race in the 2023 season, Toto Wolff declared that he has not given any thought to leaving his position as team principal. On the other hand, Max Verstappen easily won a record-tying third consecutive Drivers’ Championship, while rival Red Bull won 21 of the 22 races.
The Silver Arrows dominated F1 after Wolff’s arrival in 2013, winning every single Constructors’ Championship title during the turbo-hybrid era with Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Valtteri Bottas helping to cement the team’s status as a behemoth of modern F1.
However, since Hamilton climbed onto the top step of the podium at the penultimate round of the 2021 season, Mercedes have experienced just a single race victory, which came when George Russell claimed his first-ever Grand Prix win following a commanding display at Interlagos in 2022.
“No, I don’t,” Wolff told RacingNews365 when asked whether or not he ever considers the possibility of stepping down from his role within the Mercedes management structure. “Because I still think that I can contribute to the team in my area of expertise.
“And that is, I think, keeping it together, although I’m very emotional sometimes. But they know me so well, that I have these difficult moments on Sunday night. I can contribute.
“Unfortunately, I haven’t found someone where I would say: ‘I think that person has more energy, more drive, more skill and all of these factors that I believe are important to be a Team Principal’.”
While Mercedes still retained second place in the Constructors’ Championship in 2023, this season was much more testing than the 2022 campaign as both Hamilton and Russell struggled to extract consistent performance from the W14
Considerably more concerning was the absence of understanding that the group had of the vehicle’s way of behaving. This was best exhibited at the Brazilian Grand Prix that adjusted the last triple-header of the season.
The Silver Bolts showed up at Interlagos – the site of their latest Fabulous Prix win – hoping to take the battle to any semblance of Red Bull and McLaren in the fight for triumph. All things being equal, Mercedes got through their most unsuitable few days of the time.
Hamilton went too far in P8 in the wake of battling AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda during both the run race and the Excellent Prix, while Russell was running on the edges of the main ten subsequent to falling down the request, prior to being compelled to resign with a mechanical issue.
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