Harsh words Wolff: 'We don't understand why the car is so terrible'

Spot 13. It is by no means the position where Mercedes belongs. Yet Lewis Hamilton has to settle for a place in the middle of the pack. Not because he faced bad luck. No, simply because the Mercedes cannot move forward in Miami.

Toto Wolff, the troubled team boss of the once-dominant Formula 1 team, was obviously not a happy man at Sky Sports. "There is not a lot to say [to Lewis]. The car is simply not fast enough and putting him in a situation on his out lap where the driver isn't able to prepare their tyres makes it even worse."

'It wasn't good'

Wolff is referring to an incident with Kevin Magnussen, which has since been dealt with by the stewards: no penalty will follow for the Dane. Wolff probably has other concerns too: "Nobody makes a mistake on purpose, we're trying to give them the best position. We have in the past got it wrong many times and got it right many times. Today for George and Lewis that really went south and you can see in his first sector that the car simply wasn't there."

Hamilton grabbed a podium finish in Australia. It should have been the start of the resurgence, but it appears to be a brief one. "If things go bad, they compound bad. This happened for him and for all of us as a team. I take no enjoyment from finishing sixth because probably it was eighth or seventh. And even if it was fifth I took no enjoyment either because it's a lack of comprehension of what it is that makes this car such a nasty piece of work," Wolff added.