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Toto Wolff is proud to see the Mercedes W11 perform the way it does

Toto Wolff is "proud" to see the Mercedes W11 perform the way it does

26-02-2020 18:02
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Bobby Vincent

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has admitted he is "proud" to be able to watch the new W11 in action, and see it perform the way it does, even in pre-season testing.

Formula 1 teams tend to not take much notice of the times that their rivals set during pre-season testing due to the conditions not being too similar to what we see on raceday.

Also, the teams are determined to not give too much away in terms of their package - a concept many call "sandbagging". Wolff believes that despite us not seeing too much of the Ferrari package just yet, there is still much more to come.

"It's about learning and putting the bits together. Today was a morning of (putting the bits together) that," Wolff said to Sky Sports F1.

"You can just put it together a little bit. You can see what the Ferrari power unit is capable of doing on the Alfa (Romeo) and the Haas and the Ferrari top speed is far away from that, so there's probably a second in that.

"And we don't know the fuel load, so there's not we can interpret from the lap times (of the Ferraris)."

The Mercedes team boss has also explained how proud he is of the new Silver Arrows car, the W11: "I was just out on circuit and it makes me proud to see the car perform like it does. The car is stable and it looks really good, even in these conditions. We have a solid case to start the season.

"Maybe it's not the quickest car, but I would hope so, but maybe it's not. If it's not, at least we have a starting base on which we can develop and gradually increase our performances."