Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff insists that he is happy with the performance of his team at Suzuka despite scoring just eight points.
George Russell finished seventh in the Japanese Grand Prix after passing Oscar Piastri late in the race, while team mate Lewis Hamilton came home ninth.
Both drivers took the restart following the opening lap red flag on hard tyres before running a second stint on hards before switching to mediums at their second stops. Wolff says the team’s decision to restart on hard tyres did not work out, but he was pleased with the performance of their cars over the rest of the race.
“We had an atrocious first stint, which we need to analyse why,” he told the official F1 channel.
“A very good second and third stint and that is the positive that we take from the race. It is live testing now, for us. We’ve been on the back foot and besides our shoes for two seasons and now we’ve taken a different direction and I think [that] this is happening.”
Despite a low scoring race for Mercedes, Wolff insists that the set-up experiments carried out over the weekend have been “definitely much better,” than previously.
“Lots more data that point us in the right direction, even if it’s not reflected in the results,” he said.
“The experiments have worked. We have a clear direction – even though the qualifying and race result doesn’t reflect it at all. We’ve aimed for one-stop and then we found out it wasn’t possible, we’ve probably over-managed the tyres, but the moment we have picked up the speed on the similar stint lengths like the others, we were competitive.”
After his positive assessment of Mercedes’ race pace later in the race, Wolff says he “can’t wait to go racing” at the next round in China in two weeks’ time.
“We just need to have a better start of the weekend,” he said.
“Some of the proof of concept that we’ve done here will be on the car and then we’ll see what we can do in Shanghai.”
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2024 Japanese Grand Prix
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