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Wolff: No panic and no plans to change Mercedes' approach to '21

Mercedes' Toto Wolff has said there's not going to be a change of approach to 2021 in light of their current troubles, and won't be backing out of their shift to focusing on 2022

Toto Wolff has explained that there are no plans for Mercedes to back out of their shift of focus to 2022, and that their approach to 2021 won't change in light of their two poor race weekends in Monaco and Azerbaijan. Wolff revealed over the Monaco weekend that Mercedes have already shifted the majority of their focus to 2022, and that the W12 will only get very minorly updated between now and the end of the season - a potential worry, considering the W12 doesn't appear to be ahead of Red Bull's RB16B. "We already readjusted the plan to 2022," Wolff explained to media, including RacingNews365. "And there is no way of backing out of it. We will not change any decisions that we have taken, strategic decisions just because we had two really bad race weekends. We knew that these two race tracks are probably the worst for us and I hope I'm right with that assessment. "Let's see how the European races go now but, clearly, these two were absolutely below the standard that we set ourselves and the expectations that we set ourselves." With Mercedes scoring just a solitary seventh place with Lewis Hamilton over the past two race weekends, due to a pit stop problem for Valtteri Bottas in Monaco, as well as both drivers being outside the points in Azerbaijan, Wolff said the team are simply not as well-oiled as in previous years. "I think there's lots of things that are not running smoothly as they have in the past few years," he explained. "Operationally, it's not our A game. We haven't found the really sweet spot of the car through qualifying and race, having a quick qualifying car and a quick race. "There's just so much that we need to improve that I just want to get on it right now in order to make sure that we were actually able to compete for this championship. We can't continue losing points, like we've done in Monaco and here, it's just not acceptable for all of us."

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