Battle with Red Bull causes difficult decisions for Mercedes

Mercedes faces a tough choice in the next two weeks. The team wants to go for the title in 2021, but also not start developing the 2022 car too late.

Switch to 2022 car

Every year, Formula One teams are faced with the question of when to fully focus development on the next season. With new regulations arriving in 2022, this is more important in 2021 than in previous years. Mercedes does not seem to be able to win the title this year as easily as in previous years due to the great strides made by rival Red Bull Racing. Team boss Toto Wolff expects to have to make tough decisions in the coming weeks.

Wolff admits that every team faces the same difficult decision, but knows that the new regulations will be in place for an extended period of time: "Once you start with a deficit, it's very difficult to catch up. So it will take a while for performance to converge," the Austrian told Autosport.com. "In that respect, these are tricky decisions that we are evaluating regularly."

More to compensate in 2021

Despite Lewis Hamilton winning the first Grand Prix for Mercedes in 2021, the team is not as confident as previous years. This is partly due to an ironclad winter from Red Bull. "It does feel different," says Wolff. "The regulation changes that were introduced last year, we just probably had more deficit to compensate."