Wolff: 'Aston Martin won two seconds with a car that's half ours'

At last, Toto Wolff is convinced: Mercedes' current concept is not working and the team boss wants to get rid of it. Meanwhile, he sees customer team Aston Martin overtaking its own drivers in a car that is 'half Mercedes'.

Mercedes has clung frenetically to the W13 concept for a long time, but even Wolff must now face the fact that it just won't work. "I don’t think this package is going to be competitive eventually. We gave it our best go over the winter and now we need to regroup," he is quoted by Racer.com.

Wolff stresses that it is not like last year, when Lewis Hamilton and George Russell regularly achieved podium finishes but had to wait until the end of the season for that one victory. "I’m sure that we can win races this season, but it’s the mid and long term that we need to look at," the Mercedes team boss clarified.

Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso is ahead of both Mercedes drivers on the grid at the Bahrain Grand Prix. For that performance, the 51-year-old Austrian can only have respect and he therefore takes his proverbial hat off to the Formula 1 veteran.

Still, it is a confrontational science for Wolff, who now sees his team competing against customer team Aston Martin. "They gained two seconds in half a year and their car is half ours, from the engine, gearbox and rear suspension and using the same wind tunnel. There are a lot of parallels and we need to acknowledge that they have done an outstanding job," said a pained Wolff.