Mercedes Admit to Having Made too Many Mistakes

Mercedes have experienced a fall from grace this season, lying 20 points behind closest rivals, Ferrari, in the constructors’ championship during the first half of the season.

They have fallen behind in a lot of races, mostly due to their own errors and the team have admitted as much. Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff, spoke to the media ahead of the team’s home race in Germany.

“We’ve left points on the table and had to damage limitation more than we wanted”, Wolff told BBC Sport. “We didn’t score as many points in the triple-header as we had hoped for.”

“A lot of that was down to our own mistakes. We still scored a good amount of points, both drivers have shown strong performances and we have a fast car”, he added.

But despite all the problems and Ferrari seemingly poised to offer a tough challenge, the Mercedes boss was positive about the car going forward.

“However, there is a silver lining to all this- while we didn’t maximise on points, we did bring the quickest car to all three races”, he said. “There are many reasons why we’re looking forward to the second half of the 2018 season.”

“We’re hungry, ambitious and want to kick on from here.”

The German Grand Prix, which returns to the calendar after a one-year absence, will be the first of two consecutive race weekends for the F1 juggernaut after which there will be a mid-season break for a month.

One of the key areas where Mercedes have lost out to Ferrari is at the start. Lewis Hamilton suffered a slow start in France and Britain. He got away at Circuit Paul Ricard but wasn’t so lucky at Silverstone, as Vettel snatched the lead before the first corner.

His teammate, Bottas, was slow to get away in Austria due to which he lost three places, being passed by Hamilton, Raikkonen and Verstappen, before he regained it. Mercedes admitted that they were working on the issue.