Toto Wolff watched in amazement as Max Verstappen made his way to center stage, but eventually ended up at the Dutch wall. It just shows what a strange sport this sometimes is, says the Mercedes team boss at Sky Sports.
“Formula 1 is crazy and full of surprises,” he rejoices after qualifying. “Red Bull had a dominant pack today, their car was really cool. They were able to get the tires working after one warm-up lap while we were really struggling for control.”
“The pole position is basically gone,” said Wolf. “Max was half a second ahead when he went too far in the last corner and hit the wall. That puts us in the front row of the net and that is of course a huge advantage on Sunday.”
Mercedes has already lost
Wolf admits he already thought the pole would go to Verstappen. “Yeah, we thought we were going to beat. We had to make sure we kept attacking and we kept attacking. You can see with that round from Bottas that it made a huge difference.”
On Sunday he is also hoping to finish out front with both drivers. “Hopefully it will go well on Sunday as well, because I think the Red Bull team mainly focused on one lap. That’s why they made the tires come up to temperature very quickly. If we have a small advantage on Sunday, who knows what will happen.” Happen or occur”
Mercedes was hoping to be faster
Mercedes thought it would be faster than Red Bull in the lead-up to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, but that turned out not to be the case.
“We expected to be faster. We have a fast car and those fast turns seemed to suit us, but as we’ve seen several times this season, it hasn’t. The USA should have been the right track for us but that wasn’t the case then,” said the team boss. Brazil came and we went fast again. It’s full of surprises!”
Here’s what you need to know about the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia
This year we will be driving for the first time in Saudi Arabia on the brand new Jeddah Corniche Circuit. In the video below we tell you everything you need to know about the new Formula 1 circuit.
