⭐️ TOTO WOLFF: "NÃO TEMOS DINHEIRO PARA INVESTIR EM MELHORIAS NO CARRO" ⭐️
Toto Wolff, chefe da Mercedes, falou sobre o atual momento da equipe no campeonato:
"Não temos dinheiro para investir em melhorias no carro. Estamos tentando distribuir isso uniformemente ao longo da temporada, com base em nossos cálculos sobre quando podemos implementar as atualizações mais significativas e otimizar a pontuação no campeonato.
Mas nós só podemos fazer o que podemos fazer. É por isso é uma corrida de desenvolvimento. Se você trouxer uma atualização, cada uma das equipes de ponta terá pelo menos alguns décimos de segundo a mais. E é isso que você perde. Então, sim, a jornada tem sido um pouco mais difícil do que no início do ano"
so:
1. Mercedes saw two Ferrari lions catching up to Kimi
2. ordered George to slow down by 1.5+s in a single sector so they can set the lions after George instead
3. cancelled protection for George so Kimi could run away while George gets shredded - except he made it out alive👑
Oscar Piastri on how he gained another spot during the race 😅
“Then George’s power unit selected reverse down to Turn 7, and I got one more position.”
#F1 | #DutchGP
I genuinely don’t understand why the qrts are full of 63s. like, don’t you guys want to read about your own driver? or do you guys secretly like kimi but are too embarrassed to admit it?🤔
About saving George’s race ❌
About saving ANT’s position ✅
🔻If GR could defend HAM on older hard tyres, he could defend ANT too. Unless Mercedes believed ANT could simply pass him on the straight — which raises another question: has Mercedes still not fixed GR’s straight-line speed?
🔻Maybe you can call the swap “for the team,” but saying it was about “saving GR’s race” makes no sense.
Without the swap, there were basically four possibilities:
① ANT couldn’t hold off HAM.
ANT had fresher tyres, so he could at least fight HAM and cost him time and tyres before HAM reached GR. Even a P2/P4 would have been better for GR’s championship.
② ANT held HAM off.
Mercedes still gets P2/P3, exactly the same team result, while GR keeps P2 — better for his championship.
③ Neither ANT nor GR could hold HAM off.
Then Mercedes could end up P3/P4 or worse. But this argument only works if Mercedes believed ANT, despite having fresher tyres, had little chance of defending HAM. If so, “protecting the team result” at least makes some sense.
④ GR and ANT fought for the position and it ended in contact.
After Canada — where ANT repeatedly ended up in the gravel while fighting GR and kept asking the team over the radio to report his own teammate — maybe Mercedes thought avoiding another heated intra-team fight was safer. That would be understandable, but it still wouldn’t be about “saving GR’s race.”
What actually happened? Mercedes swapped them, then cancelled the instruction for ANT to give GR a tow, leaving GR on older hard tyres to deal with HAM. Afterwards, they admitted they hadn’t expected GR to keep the podium anyway.
So “for GR” simply doesn’t add up. And “for the team” only works if Mercedes believed ANT couldn’t defend HAM or that letting the two race was too risky.
What Mercedes clearly prioritised was securing P2 for ANT.
🔻Some people say “ANT was P2 anyway, GR was just giving the position back.”
But the first VSC had already benefited ANT. He was slow on his third stint on hards. GR had also struggled on his second set, but after using his own feedback to ask Marcus for a front-wing adjustment on the third set, he became around 0.4s faster than ANT.
Had ANT stayed out, he could have faced pressure from a faster GR and the Ferraris. Instead, he pitted for softs under the VSC — what Toto called a “free pit stop.”
So ANT got the benefit of a free stop and didn’t have to fight GR on track to regain P2, because Mercedes simply had GR give the position back.
The pit stop may have been “free” for ANT, but the whole thing wasn’t.
Someone still paid the price. That someone was George.
I saw a really interesting take:
If Mercedes have to take even these 3️⃣ points away from Russell
just to hand them to Antonelli, that suggests their upcoming major upgrade might not be as promising as they claim.