After the first round of qualifying for the 2024 season, nothing surprising happened. Max Verstappen, as usual, earned pole position, besting competitors like George Russell and Charles Leclerc. However, amidst this what has piqued the interest of other team bosses is the gap between Red Bull and their teams. Among many of them, Toto Wolff seems to be the happiest as Mercedes were able to close the gap with the Austrian outfit by three-tenths. As a result of which Silver Arrows’ boss now wants the Dutchman to relax by the pool and let others compete.
In his chat with F1 TV, Wolff stated as quoted by F1 Maximaal, “The good news is that we are only three tenths behind, and not six tenths, like last season. It is very close and I think we will have a good fight in the race. If Max gets up tomorrow and thinks: I don’t want to drive today, I want to lie by the pool, then we will have a great fight for the win.”
The grid has undoubtedly gotten closer, in contrast to the previous season when Verstappen and team saw every team playing catch-up. Although it’s not that the other teams have been able to easily catch the Dutchman, the fact that the grid has come close has given them a ray of hope.
Especially for Mercedes, which began the previous year with the wrong path of development narrowing the gap from six-tenth to three-tenth is encouraging. However, despite all of the developments, Max Verstappen remains the fastest driver on the grid. Considering that, Toto Wolff playfully suggests that if Mercedes wants to produce some better results Verstappen needs to take a break from the Grand Prix.
How did Toto Wolff bring the W15 close to Max Verstappen’s RB20?
Both of the Mercedes drivers placed in the top 10 during qualifying. While George Russell got a satisfactory P3, Lewis Hamilton despite being only two-tenths slower, finished P9. Following his driver’s performance, Toto Wolff has claimed to be experiencing some ‘bittersweet feeling.
However as he went on to divulge more, he said that the drivers’ ability to deliver such performance was due to adjustments the team made to the car’s setup. Wolff said, “We have changed so much in terms of setup. So the car was very different to drive. We knew that what we changed would cause this effect, but we probably didn’t expect it to be so extreme.”
Wolff continued by saying that although the car has responded well to the setup, there is still some doubt over the team’s performance on race day. The Austrian provided an example for this, stating that the competition is so fierce that falling even four-tenths or half a second behind could put ‘you’ in ninth place.
Wolff stated that, as a result, he is genuinely unable to predict with certainty how the race would progress. The 52-year-old eventually stated that despite everything, there is one thing they can be assured of and that is they are learning something new about the car every day, and the car itself is a ‘good’ step forward.