Toto Wolff questioned on Mercedes’ controversial sidepod issue

From nowhere, McLaren were faster than everyone except Red Bull in qualifying for the F1 British Grand Prix, then backed it up with Lando Norris finishing second.

Their upgraded MCL60 was likened to a Red Bull by Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff.

It is a different concept to the one that Mercedes threw their weight behind at the beginning of the year, and Wolff has again been questioned if his team will follow suit and use the same design that works so well for their rivals.

“We had the sidepod concept and the bodywork in the tunnel very early on already to see which avenues it would open up,” the Mercedes team principal said. 

“And how much it would add to performance, and the relative loss of downforce, the way we measure it, was substantial. 

“So it’s not something we wanted to follow up earlier in the year. 

“Will we change our design direction? I think we have a great group of aerodynamicists, led by James [Allison], and I’m sure it will be a consideration seeing the step they [McLaren] did. 

“The sidepods and the bodywork are just one part of the chassis and clearly it looks like there are interesting solutions that open up. 

“But most of the performance comes from the floor and the diffuser and we haven’t seen how they’ve interpreted the regulations and how they’ve done it. 

“So in my opinion, it’s just the package. 

“We see that the strong cars all look a little bit the same when you look from the side and from top down. 

“Certainly that has played in our minds already back in the day, but maybe that’s just a little more indication where it goes.”

Wolff was asked how important wind tunnel and CFD time is to developing the W14.

“I didn’t want to refer at all the reasons for the performance to the wind tunnel time, I just think it’s just good engineering, good decisions, work well together on the right track,” he answered. 

“We need to see whether they can repeat that performance in Budapest, which is obviously the opposite in what you need. 

“But this sport is about marginal gains. If you have 20 percent more wind tunnel time and allocation and you gain two seconds over the year, that means four tenths or fifth teams in additional performance, which is always going to help. 

“But still, we need to have the right innovation and design it the right way, put it on the car and it needs to correlate with the car and the wind tunnel. So chapeau!”

F1 returns in Hungary on July 23 where McLaren will be hoping to remain ahead of Mercedes.