Toto Wolff admits that a part of him is enjoying the process of Mercedes "getting it wrong" in 2022 as he believes this is the key to future success. The team endured a tough start to the season, with the W13 unable to match the performance of Red Bull and Ferrari's challengers, though there have been signs of progress as the campaign has moved on. This has marked a dramatic change in fortunes for Mercedes in comparison to their previous dominance of the sport; the Silver Arrows won eight consecutive Constructors' Championships from 2014 to 2021, while Lewis Hamilton clinched the World Championship in all of those years barring 2016 and 2021. However, the situation is one that Wolff has found positives in.
Wolff sees "getting it wrong" as recipe for long-term success
"I don't think it's challenging in a way because I've had much harder times in all of my life, not particularly in Formula 1, but this is actually within my comfort zone," Wolff told Square Mile . "I would say that I'm enjoying getting it wrong at the moment, because it's the basis for long-term future success, I believe. "We have had eight consecutive World Championships that hasn't been done in any other sport. And I think I know why. "All these facets have come together to make things more challenging at the moment, but at the end of the day it comes down to physics, and we got the physics wrong. "We're still the same group of people with the same ambition, energy, tools, funding. Maybe we need to tweak here and there, because psychology plays an important role, but I believe this team has all it needs to be successful, but with no sense of entitlement. "I want this to be a blip and not a longer-term phase of not being able to compete at the front."
Wolff not getting carried away by Mercedes' improvement
There have been key steps forward for Mercedes at recent races, with back-to-back double podiums for Hamilton and George Russell at the French and Hungarian Grands Prix, which has further enabled them to close the gap to second-placed Ferrari in the Constructors' battle. Wolff is keeping the improvements in perspective, though. "I don't think this [car] concept is going to be miraculously one second ahead of everybody at the end of the season, but I think we can deem ourselves successful if we have caught up," he explained. "Fundamentally, the field is going to come back together with diminishing returns – in this business that's always been the case – so it's going to be a three-way fight or maybe more teams vying for victory by the end of the season."
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