Toto Wolff is braced for “one of the most difficult” Formula 1 qualifying sessions he’s experienced at Mercedes because Red Bull’s controversial rear wing gives it the “optimum combination against us” in Azerbaijan.
Neither Lewis Hamilton or Valtteri Bottas ended the first day in Baku in the top 10, as Mercedes endured what trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin called its “worst Friday”, to follow its miserable Monaco Grand Prix two weeks ago.
Conversely, chief rival and championship leader Red Bull had an excellent opening day with a one-two in second practice.
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix has started amid a cloud of controversy over the rear wing designs – including Red Bull’s – that Mercedes and McLaren believe are against the rules but the teams in question insist are legal.
Wolff believes that Red Bull’s car is thriving in the Baku track’s slower corners but claims its rear wing is rounding off the performance advantage because it is flexing back enough to give the car more straightline speed as well.
Asked if he was surprised by the Red Bull advantage, Wolff said: “No. We knew that Monaco and Baku are not tracks that suit us.
“They were very good in those twisty parts in Monaco, so they are very good here too, and Ferrari also.
“And then on the straights, if you have a wing that gives you this additional speed, you have the optimum combination against us.
“We just need to take it on the chin here, and try to give it the best performance and collect the most points.”
Hamilton and Bottas were left bemused by their Friday struggles, with Bottas suspecting “something fundamentally wrong” was to blame.
Mercedes looked more competitive on the race simulations in FP2 but Wolff said qualifying “can be a very, very difficult session for us, probably one of the most difficult I’ve ever seen”.
“Reminds me of Singapore ’15,” he said, referencing Mercedes’ weakest track during its dominant start to the V6 turbo-hybrid engine era – where it did win from pole in 2014, before being roundly beaten by Ferrari at Marina Bay the following year (pictured below).
“But take it on the chin, and I believe we have a good race car so there’s ground to recover on Sunday and then learn.
“It is what it is, you’re trying to go as fast as possible with the kit that is available.”
Despite Wolff’s suggestion that the rear wing was playing a key role in Red Bull’s performance in Baku, his Red Bull counterpart Christian Horner said the benefit was “marginal”.
Horner has been frustrated by Wolff’s various claims during the flexi-wing row and went as far as saying on Friday that he would “shut my mouth” if he was the Austrian, hinting that Mercedes’ flexing front wing should be put under the spotlight as well.
“You compromise other aspects,” Horner said of the rear wing gains.
“In the simulated world you’re talking about half a tenth or three quarters of a tenth of a second here. It’s extremely marginal.
“It’s overstated [the benefit]. I’ve seen numbers of half a second being quoted.
“You can see that our wing was arguably flexing less than the Mercedes rear wing, so it certainly wasn’t half a second of lap time delta.
“It’s all been a little bit overhyped in the media. Like all these things, there’s never a silver bullet and I think that to have a car working well, you need everything, engine, vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics, in harmony.
“It’s never one single factor.”
