Source: Mercedes-Benz Archive

F1 News

Wolff: Mercedes more competitive on hotter tracks

Wolff: Mercedes more competitive on hotter tracks

12-08-2018 08:01
Author profile picture

Nicolás Quarles van Ufford

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff thinks that the German team's win in Hungary shows that they've made significant progress when it comes to hotter races, as the Hungaroring heated up to as much as sixty degrees Celsius.

Hot tracks are, or were, a chink in Mercedes' armour, as the Germans tended to struggle on tracks like Bahrain, where air and track temperature get really high on a race weekend. However, Wolff now explained that his team's win in Hungary shows how much progress they've made on that front.

"I think free air plays a big role," Wolff told RaceFans when asked if he was surprised that Lewis Hamilton could run ultra-softs at the start of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

"But it’s a little bit of a mystery that sometimes you perform on a tyre and not on the other one.

"And I think it was the other way around with Ferrari.

"So more data to collect, more to understand, but the over-arching feeling for us is that we won a race in Budapest with 60 degrees track temperatures.

"That is something we would have thought would not be achievable for us and that gives me a good feeling that we have understood more and we can be more competitive in the hot races in the future."

Next up on the calendar is the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of the month. Temperatures aren't expected to be as high in Spa Francorchamps, but Mercedes will want to build on their freshly retaken lead in the constructors' championship.