Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says his team shouldn’t be blamed for causing Formula 1 to become predictable.
Having won six consecutive double championships since 2014, the German manufacturer already appears well on course for a seventh after their drivers won the first three races of this season comfortably.
Indeed, at the last race in Hungary, Lewis Hamilton lapped the entire field up to fifth place at one stage and was almost half a minute clear of second-placed Max Verstappen before a late pit-stop.
Even so, Wolff insists Mercedes can’t be complacent that the advantage they had in Budapest and Austria will be repeated everywhere.
“If we would take the 2020 season for granted, as a walk in the park, and it’s basically just about picking up the trophy in Paris in December, we wouldn’t have won these [past] championships,” said the Austrian ahead of the British Grand Prix this weekend.
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“There is not one fibre in us that thinks that this championship is done. It’s something that can really catch you out.
“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.”
Even if Mercedes do continue to be in a class of their own, however, Wolff insists it isn’t their issue the other teams are so far behind.
“On the other side, dominance from a single team, whether it is us, whether it is Red Bull in the 2010 years, or whether it was Ferrari in the early 2000s is something that is always a bit odd for the championship,” he admitted.
“But it is not up to the team that has made steps to be seen as responsible for the predictability of the championship.
“We are very keen in racing against our fantastic competitors, we like to be out there fighting against Ferrari and Red Bull, we like the challenger brands like Racing Point to be part of the game, and on the other side, McLaren and Renault need to find a way back to the front.
“I would wish for nothing more than a strong competition with an unknown outcome every Friday we start FP1, but it’s very difficult in our position to really change the pecking order at that stage.
“We have one key objective, and it is about finishing every weekend to the best of our abilities, hopefully score many points, and challenge for a championship. There is nothing else we can do.”
