Mercedes boss Toto Wolff interrupted the dream with thoughts about how his team could alleviate their problems.
Concerns about the W13’s competitiveness were confirmed in qualifying for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, when Lewis Hamilton only finished fifth on the grid, seven tenths of a second short of pole position from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
Meanwhile, George Russell starts in Bahrain from 9th place.
There’s no question that Mercedes has speed, and Wolf gets through restless nights thinking about how they do it.
“I keep waking up and thinking, ‘What the hell can we do?'” he told reporters in Bahrain.
“But there are a lot of smart people who are thinking about where we can really solve our problems.”
Mentioning to Wolf that Hamilton had been talking about the build issue with the W13 and asking when this new build would hit the track, he replied: “There are low-hanging fruits that we have to grab onto, and then there are the more mid-term and long-term ones. We need to find long-term performance.”
Despite the difficulties of qualifying, Hamilton said he was pleased with the fifth place on the grid, and spoke about the team’s positive attitude.
Asked how he is handling the situation at the chassis base at Brackley and at the Mercedes High Performance Powertrains base at Brixworth, Wolf said that you need to be humble, accept the situation and find a way out of it.
“It’s very good that from a technological point of view, you set your expectations,” Wolf said. “If you don’t fit them, that’s the new baseline.
“At the moment the baseline is pretty low and we just have to approach it with humility and really come out of it.”
The Mercedes fight is pretty shocking because they’re in eight Constructors’ Championships in a row, and a lot of those titles come from blowing away the competition.
So does Wolf enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a difficult starting point?
“No, I’d rather be a second ahead of everyone and disappear into the sunset,” was his answer.
“But that’s what it is, you can call it [a] challenge or you can call it problems, but either way we can’t leave it there.”