Despite the $135,000,000 Restriction, Toto Wolff Remains Optimistic as He Reveals His Plan to Go Toe to Toe With Max Verstappen & Co.

The new technical regulations of Formula 1 have afforded all the teams a clean slate. Resources have been regulated with the inclusion of the cost cap, and the stepped aero testing handicaps have safeguarded the potency of the championship. Essentially, all the ingredients to allow maximization of performance for a team have been served on a platter by F1 and the FIA. Down in the dumps, Toto Wolff hopes to take advantage of this as he prepares to bring Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton back to winning ways.

In F1, a team has to go through a patient phase to climb the ladder in the championship. That’s why we’ve seen teams in a sort of stalemate as to the top three, the reshuffle-able midfield, and the bottom three. However, Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso have made a great case to show that with these new regulations, anything is possible. Finishing seventh last year, the Silverstone-based team is battling for P2 in the championship this year.

Toto Wolff puts a target on Red Bull’s back

For Wolff, he has a proven championship-winning team. And with Aston Martin’s spectacular upturn in fortunes, he still has some hope for the future. In an interview with Motorsport.com, he explained, “Beyond the budget, to make progress you need ideas and hours available in the wind tunnel.”

“In the end this is what we wanted, to have a financially viable model, we wanted to have 10 teams able to compete closer to each other, so aerodynamic testing restrictions for top teams have been included in the regulation.” And though he rues the $135,000,000 cost cap, he knows the Silver Arrows can do one better than Aston Martin, and that is to beat Red Bull.

“These are guidelines launched to create a more competitive starting grid, today we see that one team has done a better job than all the others, but also Aston Martin which has confirmed a giant step forward only thanks to a good job.”

“There’s [no] magic and there’s not one thing about a car that makes it mysteriously fast. It’s just engineering, the combination of all areas that form a competitive package. So I think we have what it takes to get back on top,” concluded Wolff [translated via Google Translate].

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In Wolff’s eyes, Aston Martin isn’t just a mere inspiration. It is a one-way ticket back to the glory days.

Toto Wolff’s genius Aston Martin partnership may pay off with championship glory

As things stand, Aston Martin is still a customer team of the Brackley-based outfit. That is to say, many of the parts of the AMR23 that are propelling Alonso to one podium after the other are Mercedes factory parts. In Wolff’s head, this followed by a simple game of elimination is going to pay off its dividends.

He was quoted as Sky Sports F1 as revealing, “Why it helps us, they have the whole rear end from our car, the suspension, the engines, the gearbox – all of that, so we know there are areas that are really good, that we mustn’t question too much. But it’s other areas where the cars are fundamentally different where we need to set our focus – there is a lot to learn.”

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Can Mercedes and Hamilton follow Aston Martin’s footsteps and mount a title challenge to Max Verstappen in mid-2023?