Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the team anticipated the ban on ‘quali mode’ and prepared in order to minimise its impact on their performance.
The team scored its fifth consecutive front row lock-out in qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix today. It was the first race since the FIA introduced a new technical directive preventing teams from changing engine modes between qualifying and the race.Wolff said it was noticeable the teams’ rivals who lobbied for the change did not perform well today.
“It is the mindset of this team that, when things change, [to be] as adaptable as an organisation, almost a Darwinistic principle, to confront every possible situation that comes up,” he said.
“I think that once it was clear that the lobby against our ‘quali mode’ has grown, much before the TD came out on the regulations, we shifted our development work towards that situation. And today we’ve seen for the first time how the level of performance has changed between the teams.
“There are some interesting outcomes. I think maybe the ones that pushed the hardest didn’t show great performance today.
“The biggest advantage we have focussed on is to gain race time and that happens tomorrow. But you don’t want to praise the day before the evening. So we are pushing the boundaries, we’ve had a really good Saturday and I’m very pleased for the team. Now we need to do well on Sunday.”
Mercedes will have much more power available in the race as a result of the changes, said Wolff.
“Once we knew that this was coming week we said ‘OK, let’s use it as an opportunity’. I think we have a great organisation and the mentality in Brixworth was great. They said bring it on, let’s come up with strong mode for qualifying that we can run all race.
“Overall we have lost very little qualifying performance but gained a lot of performance in the race. We can run the engine much harder in the race. And we were only able to achieve that with a lot of research and with a lot of bench running.
“So far so good, let’s see how it pans out over the next sessions.”
Wolff also revealed Mercedes did not use its ‘quali mode’ at every race this year. “We used it in Belgium,” he confirmed, “but we had race weekends before where we didn’t use it.”
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Matthijs (@matthijs)
5th September 2020, 20:46
I assume Toto is referring to Red Bull. I watched two free practices and the qualifying and throughout the weekend, Verstappen was about 9 tenths slower than Hamilton when they set times at the same time on the same compound and Verstappen was never third fastest. Nobody is using party modes in Friday practice, so the deficit in Q3 is not down to qualifying modes but to the total package of Mercedes being better.
Adam
5th September 2020, 21:06
Not just redbull, ferrari have been pushing for this since the start of the season. Now they cant cheat and dont have a qualifying mode ferrari have been telling the fia that its impossible to run a high powered qualifying mode without cheating. Its why wolff can’t hide his disdain for binotto now.
Aiii (@)
5th September 2020, 22:40
Pretty sure Red Bull has almost never qualified third or higher in Monza in recent times. Maybe once?
Button even remarked sitting on of the practice sessions on Friday that Red Bull’s high rake concept makes the car to draggy for the circuit.
What’s weird is that I don’t think anyone on the grid, in the paddock, or at home expected this to stop Merc from getting pole positions, their advantage was too high before and after the change, but they do hope it makes a difference during some crucial phases in the race, when Merc puts their engine in qualy mode for a few laps.
But this was never the track where any of this was going to matter, but the engine advantage and the aero package Merc run have suited Monza forever, this is evidenced by RP’s performance today as well. Low rake, no drag, plus the strongest engine on the grid = win. Go figure.
Prabhat
6th September 2020, 0:31
Mercedes are getting scarier.
F1oSaurus (@)
6th September 2020, 8:33
@aiii Last year Albon was 5 tenths down on Mercedes in quali. this season Verstappen is over a second down on Mercedes. So things did get a lot worse.
I found the guy who thought it might make a huge difference:
A few days ago he reiterated his stance:
He also claimed:
And now a Renault engine car is suddenly ahead of them while in Belgium the fastest Renault was still 3 tenths behind. Where Ricciardo actually looked better at the end of the race.
So yes this guy makes not a lick of sense. I wonder if you can guess who spouted all this nonsense?
BTW Red Bull is also running with low rake at Monza
FreddyVictor
6th September 2020, 11:09
Red Bull qualified P2 + 3 in 2017, but that does seem to be the exception (in hybrid-era).
MB have been ~0.9% faster than the rest of the teams this year and this post-ban time is ~1.0% so no difference IMHO.
Comparing to last year seems pointless as MB are significantly faster this year.
Jay
5th September 2020, 20:51
Without quali mode ban Mercs would have been a second clear. Just look at the drop in Racing Point and Williams advantage.
Typical F1 jumping to kneejerk conclusions without more information and running on other circuits.
anon
5th September 2020, 22:16
Jay, this would be the same Racing Point car with which Perez qualified on the 2nd row of the grid and out-qualified Red Bull, and where the gap between himself and the works Mercedes team is largely the same as it has been at previous races (in fact, possibly even slightly reduced compared to previous races)?
Williams might now have been strong here, but they were also pretty weak in Spa with a similar low downforce set up even when they had access to those higher power engine mode in qualifying. Meanwhile, Racing Point does not seem to have really dropped back all that much compared to where they’ve been in terms of lap time at previous races.
grat
6th September 2020, 3:51
Given the strain qualifying mode places on the engine, I doubt Mercedes would have run it this weekend anyway.
But the qualifying gap today makes an ominous prediction for tomorrow’s race.
F1oSaurus (@)
6th September 2020, 8:35
Jay, The gap from Q2 to Q3 is always very small at Monza. So no, it wouldn’t have mattered that much.
Actually this season Hamilton gained more time from Q2 to Q3 than in 2019
Adam
5th September 2020, 21:08
I feel sorry for williams & George williams in all this. Completely shafted by redbull, ferrari and the fia. It must have been hard for ferrari watching williams beat its engine powered cars in qualifying and they couldn’t have that. Hopefully they’ll be faster in the race
Adam
5th September 2020, 21:09
*George Russell not williams.
erikje
5th September 2020, 23:04
looked at a chart comparing the Q2 results and the Q3 results.
On every track merc was about 0,6 faster in Q3.. quali mode
RB 0,3
Renault 0,25
Ferarri… ouch.
F1oSaurus (@)
6th September 2020, 8:39
Lets see, last year Hamilton was .118 faster from Q2 to Q3. This year he improved from 1:19.092 to 1:18.887 which is .205 faster.
So he actually improved almost twice as much.
Paul Wingfield
6th September 2020, 11:41
Quali mode is a joke that Red Bull fell for, hook line and sinker.
It simply uses more of the engine’s resources than is safe, such as extra revs. This means that ALL engines could use this, even Red Bull’s Honda, but they CHOOSE not to.
When Mercedes use it next, to comply with the FIA, they’ll simply have to use it in the race too, probably for the first lap and thereby improve their chances of winning even more.