Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has downplayed his squad's chances of challenging for victory in this weekend's Formula 1 Brazilian Grand Prix. The team and driver Lewis Hamilton are the defending race winners, have claimed success at Interlagos in 2021, but have so far failed to score a Grand Prix victory in 2022 with the troublesome W13. Hopes were high in Mexico in the last race as Mercedes showed strong pace throughout practice and in the early stages of qualifying. However, World Champion Max Verstappen stormed to pole and then controlled the race after the Silver Arrows' strategy backfired by using the Hard tyres. Despite the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace also being at altitude like the Hermanos Rodriguez circuit in Mexico, Wolff is still cautious.
Wolff on Mercedes' Brazil chances
"We're proud to be coming back to Brazil, with Lewis having been made an honorary citizen this week and having had such good memories there in the past," Wolff explained. "On paper, it shouldn't be quite as strong a circuit for us as Mexico, but regardless, we want to keep up our momentum from recent races, so we will keep working hard to hopefully be in the mix once again. "We didn't optimise every opportunity in Mexico, but we still managed to score good points with Lewis's great drive to the podium and George [Russell]'s P4 finish. "It was encouraging to be in the fight for the win, showing how far we've come since the start of the year. "While we're always aiming for the top spot, we should be proud of that progress and we're aiming to keep it going through the end of the year and into 2023."
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