Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff believes tyres are now the single most important factor in the Formula 1 title fight between Mercedes and Ferrari.
Speaking after Ferrari ended Mercedes’ five-year run of British Grand Prix victories last weekend, Wolff said the team can no longer assume consistent performance from track to track.
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“I think what we’ve seen this season is a little bit of a different pattern,” Wolff told media including RaceFans. “Everybody brings upgrades to every race and there is never the silver bullet that provides you three tenths or four tenths, and this was the difference between us and Ferrari last year.
“It’s just a constant learning of the tyre which is [now] the single most important denominator for performance. And you get it right, you get it wrong.”
Mercedes has often struggled with tyre performance in hotter conditions, such as the unusually high temperatures at Silverstone last weekend.
“I believe that if we would have had 10 degrees less temperature in qualifying maybe we would have had more of a solid gap and the same [in the race],” Wolff said. “But this is like it is and we just need to learn and understand and try to get in control of the tyres in the best possible way.”
The team has suffered recent defeats at circuits it had previously considered strong. Before this season, Mercedes won the previous three races at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the previous four at the Red Bull Ring and the previous five at Silverstone. This year, they lost at all three venues to Ferrari or Red Bull.
Wolff had earlier said the team aimed to build a points buffer at tracks that suited their package. After the latest setbacks he acknowledged that approach needs revising.
“Yes, obviously I would have loved for us to build a gap in Austria and Silverstone and then lose some in Hungary and lose some in Singapore,” he said, referencing two venues where the team has historically struggled. “But we need to just look at every single event now and try to score as many points as possible.”
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