“If we show everything now, we give the competition extra options”- Toto Wolff on Mercedes’ secrecy

“If we show everything now, we give the competition extra options”- Toto Wolff confirms that Mercedes has not shown everything for 2021.

Mercedes is regarded as the favourites yet again ahead of the 2021 season start. Their recent W12 revelation conveys that they carry over most of the elements from last year’s W11, similar to any other team on the grid.

Toto Wolff has now further added suspense before his rivals by telling that Mercedes is yet to reveal its additions for this season and would only be observable in Bahrain.

“Of course, we have hidden a new super trick there; otherwise, we would have shown it. You will all be amazed when you see it,” joked Wolff, quoted by the Dutch edition of motorsport.com before more seriously saying:

“There are 10 days between our presentation and the first day of testing. If we show everything now, we give the competition extra options.

“They can then look at things, evaluate them and maybe even calculate them with CFD models. This would allow them to come onto the track at the first, second or maybe third race with a similar update.

“The 10-day period between our presentation and the test is just too big. We cannot afford to show everything so early.”

Need to spot minor gains

With new regulations being imposed, including the budget caps, there is little room for the teams’ innovation. Thus, Wolff suggests that one has to spot small gains to attain dominance.

“If you have completely new technical regulations, then everyone starts with a blank sheet of paper,” the Austrian explained. “Then there’s a good chance that one team will score points with innovations that another team has overlooked.”

“But in a year like this, when it’s an evolution of the existing regulations, it’s much more about the marginal gains. Those marginal gains are becoming a lot more important, even though they have chopped part of the floor and the consequences in terms of downforce are quite drastic.

“But you’re not talking about tenths anymore, but about hundredths that make the difference. That is very interesting. The search for marginal gains can be just as interesting as the search for big gains.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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