By Carlo Platella
In Spain, Mercedes achieved its second consecutive top-3 finish, with Lewis Hamilton returning to the podium. The Brackley team confirms the leap forward with the W15 thanks to the updates of the last month, with the hope of having taken that development path which could potentially allow the Silver Arrows to return to fighting for victory. An eventuality that would also open up interesting market scenariosas Toto Wolff himself commented in the post-race press conference.
Encouraging growth
In his optimism, the Team Principal recognizes the mistakes made by the team in Barcelona, which however do not overshadow the car’s progress: “If you look at where we finished, obviously the strategy with Russell was wrong. The team was certainly also responsible, including the 3 seconds lost at the pit stop. If you remove this however, of the final 15 seconds of delay, 10 were ahead of the first two, therefore we are much closer. There are reasons to be optimistic.”
At the checkered flag Hamilton was third behind only Verstappen and Norris, drivers of what Wolff believes to be the two best cars on the grid: “The McLaren was really fast today, but I couldn’t say how fast, because maybe Max still had something in his pocket. However, the difference between them is certainly not much they are the reference”. The Austrian manager quantifies the gap to under half a second: “Both in qualifying and in the race we saw a delay of 3 tenths from the first two. If we could close this gap we could fight for the victory.”
Wolff waiting
The Team Principal does not fail to encourage the team to continue the good things done so far: “We just have to continue to improve and look at ourselves. The most important thing is that as a team, we and our drivers Lewis and George, improve and consolidate our ability to finish on the podium, and then manage to win at a certain point”.
However, Wolff’s goal is not just to bring the Silver Arrow back to the top step of the podium. The Austrian manager does not hide his ambition to make the Brackley team an attractive destination for other top drivers, above all Verstappen himself. Hence the choice: “No decisions have been made on the pilots. We want to delay it as long as possiblebecause no one knows what can happen.” However, Wolff himself denies any contact with the home world champion Red Bull: “Right now there are no conversations with Max. We have to think about ourselves.”
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