Toto Wolff outlines Mercedes' "best case" scenario in Australia

Australian Grand Prix

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Wolff outlines Mercedes' "best case" scenario in Australia

Mercedes qualified fifth and sixth

Ewan Gale

Sunday 10 April 2022 02:00

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has outlined Mercedes' "best case" scenario at the Australian Grand Prix.

The Silver Arrows ended Friday only 11th and 13th and staring at a difficult task to reach Q3 with either car.

But on in qualifying both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell found pace to qualify fifth and sixth, although their fortunes were helped by a crash for Fernando Alonso and difficulties for Carlos Sainz in Q3.

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Asked what his hopes were for the race around the revamped Albert Park circuit, Wolff explained: "I think our best case would be to end up fifth and sixth, if you look at the pure car pace.

"Obviously, people can crash and DNF, so can we, but if we were able to end up fifth and sixth and outperform the cars that were close to us in qualifying, then I would see this as a very good outcome."

Wolff learned of DRS change during FP3

F1 arrived in Melbourne braced for a DRS challenge given four zones were in action for the weekend.

The zone in the lead-up to turn nine was removed, however, ahead of Saturday's running for safety reasons and addressing the change, Wolff said: "To be honest, I found out about it in the session.

"Obviously, the guys knew, the engineers knew it. I don't know why it was changed, it made life difficult for everybody but it is what it is."