{"id":37218,"date":"2025-04-21T02:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T02:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/37218\/"},"modified":"2025-04-21T02:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T02:49:10","slug":"wolff-laments-worst-performance-of-the-season-for-mercedes-in-jeddah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/37218\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolff laments “worst performance of the season” for Mercedes in Jeddah"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toto Wolff was left furious believing the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was the \u201cworst performance of the year so far\u201d for Mercedes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Silver Arrows finished fifth (George Russell<\/a>) and sixth (Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a>) in Jeddah, as it significantly lagged behind rivals McLaren<\/a>, Red Bull and Ferrari<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wolff was confused as to why Mercedes lacked pace, especially when it has had a strong start to the 2025 Formula 1 season entering the grand prix second in the championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was clearly our worst performance of the year so far,\u201d the Mercedes boss said. \u201cThe pace just dropped away with blistering, overheating tyres and so far we haven\u2019t got an explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that Mercedes was quick in qualifying – Russell started the grand prix in third – made the frustration deeper for Wolff.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cYou manage your expectations being the second quickest – and even that is not obviously what we would wish to achieve – and then you see the race panning out like it did. It just adds to the frustration of the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Toto <\/p>\n

Toto Wolff, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bloxham \/ Motorsport Images<\/p>\n

Russell shared Wolff\u2019s frustrations having struggled to manage his Pirelli tyres, telling Sky Sports F1 \u201cthey were massively overheating\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pushing hard to stay with Max at the beginning of the second stint,\u201d he added, \u201cbut I knew I wasn\u2019t going to be able to hold on and we fell off that cliff towards the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was dropping a second a lap in the last 15 laps, but to be fair, we just didn\u2019t have the pace and even if I had managed more, I think I still would have come home in P5.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that it\u2019s a bit of a weakness of our car at the moment. And coming home P5\u00a0 on a bad day – we\u2019ll take it – but we need to try and improve it quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell added that the lack of performance wasn\u2019t caused by hotter temperatures on track: \u201cIt\u2019s about how fast we’re going through these corners, and for whatever reason, we’ve generated more temperature than our rivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen suddenly you get to a point where the tyres are like a balloon. We had blistering on the front, blistering on the rear, and then suddenly you just have no grip from the tyre at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

This comes after a positive start to the 2025 season for Russell, who claimed three podiums across the opening four grands prix including a runner-up finish in Bahrain last weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to understand why Bahrain was so positive, because that\u2019s also an overheating track, but a very different type of overheating to what you experience here in Jeddah,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had higher hopes for the race today than we had for Bahrain, and it kind of turned out the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Filip Cleeren and Mark Mann-Bryans<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Emily Selleck\n<\/p>\n

Formula 1\n<\/p>\n

Mercedes\n<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff was left furious believing the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was the \u201cworst performance of the year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,16025,4859,16024,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-37218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-jeddah-street-circuit","12":"tag-mercedes","13":"tag-saudi-arabian-gp","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114373680544676244","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}