Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says Ferrari blaming FIA technical directives for their loss of engine performance is “complete bulls**t”.
It has been a key feature of the 2020 car that the top speed advantage the Italian team had last year has become a significant deficit compared to their rivals this year.
Though a focus on downforce has also led to excessive drag on the SF1000, much of the blame has been on the engine after changes were made, following the governing body’s investigation into possible tricks Ferrari were using that were in breach of the regulations.
Last weekend, team boss Mattia Binotto accepted for the first time that the subsequent directives have had an impact on the Scuderia, describing the power unit regulations overall as “very difficult and complex”.
But the Mercedes boss wasn’t having any of it…
“Another complete bullshit story, technical directives,” Wolff bluntly said in reply. “There’s clear regulation on power units.
“There have been clarifications in Austin, what is allowed to do or not, which were important, but nothing that was in any way surprising because if you comply to the regulations that was anyway clear.”
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What the Mercedes boss also considers “ironic” is that, by focusing so hard on trying to keep up with an engine that was potentially illegal, it has led to the situation this year where the Brackley-based team are in a class of their own.
“I think the irony of the story is that we were pushed by some of our competitors to absolutely new levels,” he continued.
“It brought us to almost burnout last year, to develop and innovate in a way to be competitive on track.
“And here we go, I think we made a substantial jump in performance from 2019 to 2020 because we needed to last year, and that is a little bit ironic for me.”
Indeed, Mercedes has won all three races to start this delayed season and their W11 appears unstoppable with their drivers almost a second clear in qualifying in Hungary.
However, in typical Toto fashion, the Austrian isn’t getting carried away yet.
“I’m not sure I’m seeing the competition fall apart because you can see that Red Bull was struggling all through the weekend and then they had a pretty decent race car, a car that didn’t look like it could start and the mechanics did a really awesome job on the car there,” he told Formula1.com alluding to the frantic rush to repair Max Verstappen’s RB16 after he went off on the lap to the grid.
“The gaps are nothing. If you look at the driver points’ standing, it’s 30 points that after three races we have with Lewis to Max. So you have one DNF and all the gap is gone, so we just need to keep going.
“We mustn’t be carried away with thinking we are the greatest because then you start quickly losing.”
