Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admits that the 8x F1 champions have taken a step back post-summer break

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admitted that they have taken a step back after the summer break as seen in their performances in Zandvoort and Monza. The German team entered the summer break on a high as they won three of the four races with both their drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, and closed the gap to their rivals.

The former world champions got a bit lucky in Austria as they benefited from the collision between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris while winning in Silverstone and Spa on pure performance.

However, the eight-time constructor’s champions have been unable to replicate that performance in Zandvoort and Monza as they finished behind the front three teams on the track. Speaking with PitDebrief, the Mercedes team boss spoke about their slump after the mid-season break and reflected on their performance in Monza:

“It was better than Zandvoort, but we are quite a chunk from pre-summer performances, where I think we scored the podium in five races or six races, and three victories, two on merit. And we don’t seem to be playing there at the moment in the front.”

“And when you’re on the back foot pace-wise, then obviously, you’re in a bit of a no-man’s land in terms of strategy. So it’s good that we have a little bit of time to analyze that,” Wolff added.

Mercedes team boss chimes in about the weakness of the W15

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff stated that he was happy that the W15 could extract the performance on a single lap. However, the weaknesses in the balancing and tire management have hampered in making progress in the races.

As quoted by the aforementioned source, the Austrian said:

“I think we are able to extract a single lap, which is, in principle, good news but then the balance isn’t, in a way, good enough to keep the tires happy for the race. We suffered from graining too, front left graining. I think it came at various times. ”

“With George, the graining started a bit early on stint one, and then we were very defensive in our lap times. In the second stint, in order to maybe extract more tire performance, maybe to make a one-stop last, but then the graining came up, but it was so easy to get it wrong,” he added.

Mercedes were marginally quicker than the Red Bull at the Italian Grand Prix, as Lewis Hamilton finished ahead of Max Verstappen and George Russell finished ahead of Sergio Perez, respectively.

The Brackley-based outfit has scored 26 points from the two weekends after the summer break. They are stuck in P4 in the Constructor’s Championship with 292 points and would look for better performance in the streets of Baku and Singapore.