Wolff: Upcoming season is a 'two-year championship'

Mercedes

Wolff: Upcoming season is a 'two-year championship'

There are big, big changes coming in 2021...

Martin Macdonald

Tuesday 11 February 2020 12:14

Toto Wolff insists the upcoming 2020 F1 season is a ‘two-year championship’ as teams focus not only on this campaign, but 2021 too which will see one of the biggest regulation overhauls in the sport’s history.

The season after next will see radical changes to F1 to try and even the playing field among constructor teams, most notably a cost cap to stop elite teams overspending compared to smaller outfits.

With that in mind, the larger teams have openly admitted to spending as much as possible in 2020 before it is against the rules in 2021, with one eye clearly on not just this championship but the next one too.

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“This year’s championship is a two year championship,” Wolff said at the Royal Automobile Club in London this week.

“It is not only about 2020 under the current regulations.

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“There’s such a massive regulatory change for 2021, that balancing your allocation of resource will be crucial in terms of how much of your resource you’re switching into the 2021 car.

“Obviously, the learning and development slope is much steeper at the beginning. So if you get it wrong and you’re months behind, you might be half a second behind.

“And this is a challenge which we have embraced in the past through two regulatory changes, and we love that one.”

In 2019, Mercedes broke the record for most driver/constructor title doubles won in a row after Lewis Hamilton’s victory, and even though they have dominated the sport in recent years, Wolff insists that complacency will not set in.

“Every year we try to set the right objectives, and objectives that are understood throughout the organisation,” he insisted.

“I think it’s so important to wake up with purpose. And I don’t see a lack of motivation and purpose within the organisation

“The pain of losing is so much more intense and lasts so much longer than the joy of winning. And this is in a way what drives us strongly. The sheer thought about losing makes you forget about all your previous achievements.

“Last year’s record doesn’t buy us any credit for the 2020 championship. So all lap times, all points go to zero and we are yet again in front of another challenge.

“In a way there is a reason why six was a world record. Because it’s bloody difficult. And we want to push that needle further.”