Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff believes his team has “made progress” as they look to avoid a repeat of the tyre problems from the Mexico GP.
It was the second straight race the German manufacturer had run into trouble with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas essentially cruising to the finish line in the closing stages while Ferrari and Red Bull pulled away ahead at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
“Mexico was a bittersweet weekend,” Wolff said. “On the one hand, we’re extremely happy for Lewis. He is the best driver of his generation and his fifth Formula 1 world championship puts him among the absolute greatest this sport has ever seen.
“On the other hand, we cannot be satisfied with our race performance in Mexico. Qualifying looked promising but just a few laps into the race, we knew that we’d run into big issues with the tyres.
“We started to analyse those problems immediately after the race and have made progress with understanding the challenges we faced and why.
“It’s important to apply all our learnings to make sure we come back strong in Brazil.”
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This weekend’s venue at Interlagos is another which can see tyre wear play a major role with high temperatures and a technical layout and for Mercedes, there is still one more goal to achieve.
“Our target for this season was to win both championships, not one title or the other, so our mindset is one of unfinished business as we head to Sao Paulo,” Wolff said.
“We have a big battle on our hands for the constructors’ title and we have lost ground to Ferrari in each of the past race weekends – even though we had the base performance to do better.
“This is the moment to keep our feet on the ground, focus clearly on the objective and trust in our processes and people to deliver.”
Right now, Mercedes are 55 points clear of Ferrari and need to avoid losing at most 12 points to secure a double title success for a fifth straight year.