“I’m not sure we had the fastest car”- Toto Wolff still backs Red Bull superiority despite P1 & P2 in quali

“I’m not sure we had the fastest car”– Toto Wolff still is suspicious of Red Bull’s might ahead of the race on Sunday, despite a favourable start.

Mercedes gave the highlights of its 2020 dominance at Algarve, with both Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton securing the front row start ahead of the race.

However, Toto Wolff is still not convinced that Mercedes has the edge over Red Bull, despite taking the pole start in the last two Grand Prix. But he still thinks that his team made a big step forward.

“I’m not sure we had the fastest car, but we made a big step forward,” he said. “We had an 18.2 from Max that was deleted because of track limits. He’s probably gained half a tenth maybe, but no more.”

“Then, on the other side, Valtteri had a very good first lap in Q3, so I would say we caught up a lot in quali, and may be on par. We think we have a good racing car.”

Tyres didn’t matter

It was believed that Mercedes are going to make a blunder by choosing medium-hard compound tyres in Q3, and they made an average performance. Yet Wolff thinks that it didn’t matter, as others were also struggling on the soft compound.

“We were on target to do a 17.7 on the medium and then we took the decision that we would see how the soft run would go in Q3, the first soft run, and then decide whether we take a medium or soft.”

Then the decision was taken to take a medium because the times were slow, the 18.3 that we had. “In hindsight, was it the right decision? I have no idea.”

“It is what it is, nobody can get really much faster on the second run, because as I said, Max was on an 18.2 and then ended up on a 18.7.”

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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