Wolff looking at the positives: "We must accept P3 and P4 today"

Mercedes finished the weekend with a strong points haul, as Lewis Hamilton and George Russell claimed the third and fourth positions respectively. Team boss Toto Wolff has decided to take a positive look at things regarding the results this weekend.

"We always seem to be in two minds at the end of the races right now. We must accept P3 and P4 today," Wolff told Sky Sports after the race, "when you think we had two cars in pieces on Friday afternoon, that's a strong result. However, we are missing the two or three tenths to be able to race at the front."

He went on to highlight the importance of growth as a team, stating: "We have glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel with the car - then it disappears again, and we need to get on top of that. Today, over a race stint, we looked more competitive than yesterday. We had two drivers needing to put in strong recovery drives, after incidents in the Sprint and in the opening laps."

Wolff looking for improvement soon

The Austrian expressed his happiness for Charles Leclerc, who claimed victory today, but also explained the need to close the gap as soon as possible, by saying, "It was good to see Charles on the top step. He's had a lot of bad luck, and it looks like the fight is on at the front. However, now we need to work on the car to close the gap to the teams ahead, then see how we can get in the mix.

"I think we have halved the gap over the last few months and we understand better. We are still the third force and in the middle of nowhere."

Always looking at the positives

Wolff was convinced that 'we could have probably held onto Max and not ended so far behind,' when talking about the pace in the race but also highlighted the fact that they weren't hopeful of as strong a finish as they ended with. He said, "we didn't expect to be competitive here due to the nature of the track because it wasn't a happy place for us in the past."

Paul Ricard should be like Silverstone despite lack of pace on straights

The Mercedes team boss finished by adding his hope for the French Grand Prix, but also that work needs to be done in order to get faster on the straights, so they are able to compete with Ferrari and Red Bull, stating: "Paul Ricard should be okay. It is a smooth circuit like Silverstone with fast corners and on paper, it looks like we can have a good performance there. We were lacking speed on the straight and I think we are draggy. We seem to be lacking power here, maybe it is the altitude. The guys at HPP will look at it and make gains at the next events."