Toto Wolff admits Mercedes 'BARN DOOR' didn't work in Belgian GP qualifying

Belgian Grand Prix

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Wolff admits Mercedes 'BARN DOOR' didn't work in Belgian GP qualifying

George Russell and Lewis Hamilton ran different rear wing setups on Friday

Chris Deeley

Saturday 29 July 2023 09:57

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Toto Wolff has admitted that Mercedes are unsure how well their new upgrades are performing at the Belgian Grand Prix thanks to a day of wet running on Friday.

The Mercedes chief went on to describe George Russell's rear wing as 'a bit of a barn door' compared to Lewis Hamilton's, with the younger driver not using the low-downforce configuration that his more experienced team-mate bolted on.

Hamilton qualified fourth, moving up to third on the grid thanks to Max Verstappen's five-place penalty, while Russell could only put his car eighth despite getting the best version of the track for his final lap.

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The expectation is that Russell's more downforce-focused setup will help him in the long race runs, helping extract more from the tyres.

Wolff: We need to assess rear wing performance

"P3 is good. You can see that it’s pretty bunched up from P2 onwards.

“I think we couldn’t really assess whether our new parts are working because of the tricky conditions so let’s hope for a dry Saturday and dry Sunday.

“You can see that (Lewis and George) are running very different rear wings and configurations and you can see that Lewis is just able to extract more performance of that.

“George has a bit of a barn door in the back and that can be advantageous for tyre performance on Sunday but didn’t help today so we have to assess why it didn’t.”