Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, 2019

Bottas qualifying sixth “hurts us a lot” in fight with Ferrari – Wolff

2019 Canadian Grand Prix

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Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff believes his team will struggle to make good use of its long-run pace after being out-qualified by Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton will start the Canadian Grand Prix in between the two Ferraris while Valtteri Bottas will line up sixth after making mistakes on both his runs in Q3.

“That hurts a lot,” Wolff admitted when asked about Bottas, who was out-qualified by Daniel Ricciardo’s Renault and Pierre Gasly’s Red Bull. “Because also the Renaults and he Hondas have shown quite some straight-line speed.”

Bottas, like Hamilton and the Ferrari drivers, will start the race on the medium compound tyres. “Ricciardo is starting on a soft I believe so he will eventually run into trouble in his first stint. Gasly also.

“So we may be able to recover on strategy with those two cars but from then on it’s going to be very difficult. But also these two you need to consider I think in the first five to 10 laps they are going to be extremely fast.”

Wolff said Mercedes’ long-run pace had been encouraging on Friday but isn’t sure they’ll be able to wield it to get to the front of the field.

“Our long runs look very good, yes. Particularly when you look at some of our competitors whose tyres were melting away.

“But it’s still about getting past. If you can’t get past it’s going to be very difficult. But I’m hopeful for the race, that our long runs give us a certain benefit that we need to extract.”

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16 comments on “Bottas qualifying sixth “hurts us a lot” in fight with Ferrari – Wolff”

  1. Just don’t understand why they couldn’t have sent him out in the lull between first and second runs when it’s such a short track and traffic is such known issue. Not like track evolution is going to be massive in 3 minutes, especially with no one on the track.

    1. @balue Who you’re specifically referring to here?

    2. @balue Max isn’t even mentioned in the article if he’s the one, LOL. I didn’t find anything wrong with Bottas’ Q3 timings.

      1. @jerejj Max? How did you even connect him here?

        1. @balue Because based on your wording, he seemed the only one fitting for the reference.

          1. @jerejj You do understand this is an article about Bottas right? LOL

  2. No wingman helping, Hamilton in dangerous position, Leclerc have chance to overtake him on straights especially after DRS enabled. If Hamilton couldn’t get away during the start chances of Leclerc overtaking him is high.

  3. Toto keeping up with the narrative that there is some kind of battle with Ferrari . That’s rich..

    1. Yup. Worse case scenario for Mercedes is that Ferrari might (remains to be seen) lessen the gap to them by a mere handful of points.

    2. Exactly. Always the drama queen is Mr. Wolff.

  4. i like totos winning is everything mentality. a true racer. being second is the first of the last…he was very disappointed for both drivers. more for bottas especially. thats what makes them champions i guess. 2nd is just not good enough. they exist to win.

  5. Adam (@rocketpanda)
    9th June 2019, 12:24

    If he’s meaning the fight with Ferrari in regards to winning the race, Mercedes still have a very good chance of beating Vettel. If he’s meaning the fight with Ferrari in regards to overall points scored, Bottas in sixth does hurt them. But they’re SO FAR ahead of Ferrari in the championship already that it hardly warrants worrying about. Also their car is still pretty fantastic, Bottas should be able to overhaul Ricciardo & Gasly so 4th at least is the minimium for him. The only huge casualty here is Bottas’s championship bid.

    Think Toto’s crying Wolff again.

  6. To lead a new team into TOTAL DOMINATION year after year under all conditions is something that garners respect imo .If he has an approach that is maybe different than some other F1 team bosses maybe people should be paying close attention to what he is doing as a recipe for winning rather than looking to criticize his every word. You don’t win 75% of all races by applauding anything less than winning. He manages to keep the team focused despite all the winning which is no easy feat. I see Top level sports team coaches struggle to keep the team focused thru the second 1/2 of a game while leading let alone year after year. I have tremendous respect for Toto Wolff based on the results the team has seen under his leadership

    1. Agree. I would like to know how the Mercedes team is running their teams internally and how they are so efficient. Clearly they are consistently better than the other teams on the grid. As a Project Manager within Engineering, I would love to learn about the way Mercedes are doing it – are they divided in subteams, using Scrum and or Agile methods? Have they invented or adopted new ways of doing it? Do they use specific Project Management software or systems? How do they motivate their teams within the big Team? How do they use feedback and how do they measure the individual teams efficiency and performance?
      If Ferrari by now had the lead Mercedes have, I would say that Ferrari would have a chance of winning the championship, despite the usual own errors they tend to make, and as they did last season.

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