Toto Wolff insists George Russell’s Singapore win last time out was “no fluke”. But the Mercedes chief admits he is unsure whether his team can win again in Austin this weekend.
Conditions at the Circuit of the Americas will be very different to the humid night race which Russell won while teenager team-mate Kimi Antonelli was fifth. And Mercedes’ performance has been inconsistent for much of the year despite Brit Russell’s superb personal displays. But boss Wolff hopes his team can build on back-to-back solid showings in Baku and Singapore to challenge again in Texas.
He said: “We come off the back of a strong result in Singapore, taking victory with George and P5 for Kimi. Not only was that unexpected, our level of performance across Saturday and Sunday showed it was no fluke.
“That has been the story of the season somewhat, where it isn’t clear which team will be leading the way from weekend-to-weekend. We were also good in Azerbaijan so we are curious to see if we can maintain the step we have made with the W16 into this next run of races across the Americas.
“They are very different layouts and challenges to those two street circuits, so we are heading a little into the unknown, but that unpredictability is what makes our sport so enjoyable.” Austin will host the fourth of six Sprint races this year, meaning teams will have just one hour of practice to find the best set-up for their cars.
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Wolff believes that, and the COTA track’s unique mix of high and low-speed corners, will present “a real test” of their performance this weekend. The Austrian added: “It’s the fourth Sprint weekend of the year. That creates extra jeopardy but also more opportunity if we can get the W16 into a good place quickly.”
Wolff’s words come after Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said he was keen to “manage expectations” ahead of the Texas race. Shovlin said: “If you look at the circuits that we’ve been strong at, and particularly the races that we’ve won this year, Montreal, Singapore, they’re relatively low-speed tracks.
“There’s no doubt that this car is working well at that slow speed corner region where we seem to have very good grip, the drivers have got very good confidence on the big braking zones. What we haven’t had so much of in those tracks is the high-speed cornering content and that’s perhaps an area where we’ve struggled a bit.
“We’re still working on that, we’re still trying to look for every little bit that’s there in setup, but that’s certainly something that’s coming. If you look at a track like Austin, it’s got a very, very fast sector one, so we need to make sure we can perform in that area.
“It was encouraging to see that the car can still win races, we saw a brilliant performance from George, the whole team has really been fired up from this and that’s given us a lot of energy to take into these final six races. Very different circuits coming up, we’re going to have to do a lot to adapt the car, but we’re definitely not going to give up the fight.”