Wolff: “We’ve lost a year - Aston Martin took that decision, came back strong”
Mercedes endured a lacklustre start to F1 2023 as Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished fifth and seventh in Sunday’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Hamilton finished nearly a minute adrift of Max Verstappen and was beaten by both Red Bull’s, Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, while Lance Stroll put his Aston Martin between the two Mercedes.
Wolff labelled the Bahrain opener as “one of the worst days in racing” and demanded “radical” changes for a new development approach after admitting Mercedes would need to need to change their radical sidepod concept to get back to the front of the grid.
"When you look at where we were at the end of the season, it seemed like we caught up a lot,” Wolff said. “But I think it was just a matter of which circuits suited us and which did not.
"I think we've almost doubled if not tripled the gap to Red Bull and this is what we need to look at, everything in between - the Ferrari - that's just a sideshow.
"And having said that, what Aston Martin was able to achieve is a good inspiration because they came back from two seconds off the pace to being the second quickest team probably on the road.
"And with us, everything's bad.”
Wolff added: "We've lost a year in development in order to have a steeper development curve and you just need to take these decisions.
"As I said before, Aston Martin took that decision, and they came back strong.
"So if we start from our base, maybe we can come back strong and chase the Red Bulls. That's the ambition."
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