Wolff picks 'strange' best race of season for Mercedes

Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff has chosen the United StatesGrand Prix as the best race for the outfit in 2023, despite LewisHamilton having been disqualified from second place. The seven-timeWorld Champion finished second on the road after a close finishwith Max Verstappen, in what appeared to be one of Mercedes mostcompetitive races of the year. It later emerged that both Hamiltonand Charles Leclerc, who finished third, failed the post-raceinspection process carried out by the FIA due to excessiveskid-block wear. Mercedes blamed the disqualification on acombination of the excessive bumps at the Circuit of the Americasand the nature of the weekend itself, owing to the Sprint formatwhich gave them limited options to change car setup. When askedabout his highlight for the 2023 season, Wolff chose this race eventhough they came away without a podium: "This might sound strange,because we got disqualified, but Austin! "We brought an upgradepackage that worked, the car was performing well, and we werehunting down the leader. You could say, ‘well, you weredisqualified for a car that was too low’, but the genuineperformance was there and that was an enjoyable weekend. "I'vealways said that I'd rather have a fast car that we haven't tunedin the right way. And obviously you need to finish. But that wasthe best weekend overall, seeing that the correlation between thewind tunnel and the track was good." Key learnings for 2024 The W14proved to be another difficult car for Mercedes, as they struggledto produce the results they anticipated after a strong finish tothe 2022 season. The switch in car concepts midway through the yearbought them some performance, but overall they still lacked thepace to challenge for a win. Wolff believes this will be one oftheir key learnings heading into the 2024 season for the W15."During the year, we realised that our car was not operating in asstable a manner as we had predicted. That is perhaps because wedidn't develop it in the necessary window," explained Wolff. "Itwas clear that the interaction between chassis and tyres didn'twork perfectly. So, in that respect, this was the most importantlearning."