Toto Wolff - Mercedes resigning from a battle "is the last thing we do"

Toto Wolff at the Styrian Grand Prix — Photo: © LAT Images

Austrian Grand Prix

Wolff - Mercedes resigning from a battle "is the last thing we do"

Mercedes now sit 44 points behind Red Bull in the standings

Sam Hall & Ewan Gale

Monday 5 July 2021 09:28

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Toto Wolff has insisted he is far from resigned to defeat in Mercedes' battle with Red Bull for this year's F1 title after another dominant Max Verstappen win at the Austrian Grand Prix.

The Dutchman took his third consecutive victory - and Red Bull's fifth - by 18 seconds over Valtteri Bottas, with Mercedes powerless to resist the onslaught its rivals has delivered across the past two months.

With the gap now at 44 points between the teams and 32 points between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, Wolff was asked if he was resigned to fighting a rearguard battle.

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“No. We never resign [from] any battle, it is the last thing we do," replied Wolff. "If I have to resign you will see me going down, the fire with my hand and the sword straight up.

“I am always the sceptical person, half-empty glass, but in that case, I am seeing the positives and the positives are there are 13 races to go.

"We are one DNF away from Red Bull, no more, and we have lost more points than we should have. We have lost due to our own mistakes.

“Clearly in Austria, or in the last few races, we didn’t have the performance that we must have in order to fight Red Bull.

"We are very aware of that and we need to just get our act together overall in every single area and hopefully perform better on the other tracks.”

Wolff takes P2 and P4 as a "good" result

Hamilton was on course to finish second with Bottas third after both Mercedes drivers had found a way past McLaren's Lando Norris, who had started on the front row.

Damage to the rear floor structure of Hamilton's Mercedes, however, intervened and forced the seven-time champion down to fourth by the end of the race.

Believing the result to be "good" for the team, Wolff explained: "If we hadn’t have been stuck behind the McLaren at the beginning where we lost chunks of time, we would have been racing him [Verstappen].

"I’m not sure that it would have been enough to win the race but the race pace was there and it would have been good.

“You can see that particularly also with Valtteri’s pace, once Lewis lost downforce, the pace was there and there was never any risk from the back.

“So in a way, Sunday was much better than last Sunday [Styrian Grand Prix] in what we would expect in terms of performance in the car.”