Mercedes has 'many deficits' to Ferrari - Wolff

Mercedes currently has “many deficits” compared to Formula 1 title rivals Ferrari in 2018, team boss Toto Wolff has conceded.

Polesitter Lewis Hamilton lost out to Sebastian Vettel on the opening lap at Spa and was unable to fight back as the German controlled proceedings to reduce Hamilton’s advantage in the championship to 17 points.

Mercedes’ defeat to Ferrari at a track it has largely dominated during the current V6 hybrid era highlighted the German manufacturer’s apparent engine deficit to the Scuderia as Vettel sailed past Hamilton along the Kemmel Straight. But Wolff insisted Mercedes is not only losing out to Ferrari in terms of straight-line speed.

“When I look at the race, I see many deficits,” Wolff admitted. “We’re a strong team and but there are deficits which are obvious, which cause us not to perform as we expect.

“The deficits, you can see the deficits, it’s the slow speed, and it’s the traction,” he added. “This is what I would summarise as the main weaknesses of the moment. We clearly, compared to Ferraris and Red Bulls and Force Indias, [were] the car that was cooking the tyres the most.”

Vettel’s dominant performance led Hamilton to refer to “trick things” on Ferrari’s car, though he later clarified his comments and stressed he was not questioning the legality of Ferrari’s 2018 challenger.

Wolff, who said he had faith the FIA was policing the regulations fairly, played down Hamilton’s comments and believes Ferrari is simply benefitting from the way it is running and calibrating its power unit.

“They [Ferrari] have a power advantage,” he said. “We have seen that in qualifying, that power advantage is at various parts of the straights. You can see even if the corner exits are worse than ours, the engine keeps pulling.

“There is nothing that could be a trick, it might also be related to how you run the engine and how you calibrate it. In the same way they de-rated earlier in qualifying than we did.

“We can see they have a slight power advantage and then you add that to our weaknesses out of Turn 1 especially and that causes the double whammy. If you’re not very good at traction and you’re being outperformed slightly on power then lap one happens.”

Mercedes and Ferrari both introduced their final engine upgrades of the season in Belgium, meaning any further power unit changes would incur grid penalties. However, Wolff is sure Mercedes can find gains in power via other means.

“It’s all about understanding the new power unit, calibrating and extracting all of the performance out of the software, the fuels and the oils and optimising the way you run the engine,” Wolff explained.

“It’s something that doesn’t involve the hardware, and this is an ongoing process so you can find performance. But there is no silver bullet. We won’t find any performance where it adds three tenths to the car or to the engine and then we disappear into the sunset.”