Toto Wolff Finally Accepts Mercedes “Biggest Mistake” That Clipped Lewis Hamilton’s Wings

Two years, 44 races, two extremely underperforming and troubled cars, zero race wins, and one world champion. This is the sorrowful tale of Lewis Hamilton with Mercedes for the past couple of seasons. However, we can’t blame the Brit for this scenario and the real blame goes to the team and the boss Toto Wolff has finally made the harsh admission.

Toto Wolff and the entire Mercedes team were reluctant to abandon their zero pod concept by putting faith into it thanks to the solitary race win in the 2022 Brazilian GP. However, the disastrous start to the 2023 season proved the concept is flawed and thanks to Hamilton’s incessant complaints, a change came. Now the Austrian boss has made an honest admission about the team’s mistake assuming the blame.

Toto Wolff assumes the blame for producing back-to-back subpar cars

Mercedes was on top of the F1 world for eight consecutive years. However, the mighty fell from the top and hit the bottom as the W13 was a big failure, and their resistance to start fresh in 2023 kept them at the bottom. Toto Wolff has finally admitted his mistake that kept Hamilton at bay in a recent interview as quoted by Formula Passion.

Wolff admitted, “It was my biggest mistake in recent years. We took the wrong approach to building the car for the 2022 season, we didn’t take the correct path. Confirming this concept in 2023 was the second big mistake, but I defend this choice because in the end, we had won in Brazil. Each team would take that weekend as a basis for the new season. More than half of the team was convinced that the situation was improving,” (Translated via Google) 

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These mistakes have cost them dearly and we know it. Just one win in two seasons is not something we or anyone expects from Mercedes. This is why the team is taking drastic steps heading into 2024 as Hamilton is counting down the days.

Lewis Hamilton counting down the days before he can get his hands on the W15

The Brit has been extremely troubled in the last two seasons and has rarely been able to drive a car worthy of his talents. This has, as we all know, brought a lot of misery to everyone, especially him. This is exactly why the seven-time world champion became extremely blatant when expressing his thoughts about the car and how he can’t wait to rid himself of the W14.

“I’ve just got to do better in qualifying, so it’s not such a difficult day,” he said. “And [it’s about] just living with the car that we have at the moment. [At Monza] it’s the third-fastest car and it’s obviously painful for all of us. We wish we were quicker. But we’re just counting down the days to February.”

These were his comments after the Italian GP. One can imagine these feelings toward the car have only grown stronger as the season progressed, especially with his race in Abu Dhabi.

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Now the question remains, come February, will he still be disappointed or Mercedes can pull a rabbit out of their hat during the winter? It will be interesting to see which team closes the most gap to the front in 2024.