Mercedes’ team principal Toto Wolff has mixed feelings about the three training sessions held in Monaco, and he wants to keep his expectations low.
The German team managed to get good results, with Lewis Hamilton finishing in the top3 each time, but George Russell wasn’t as consistent, especially during FP2.
Anyway, both Mercedes cars are looking stronger here than in Imola. For Toto Wolff, it depends on the absence of fast corners: “there are only slow and medium-speed corners here, so maybe it’s easier to get the setup right.”
But the German doesn’t feel quite optimistic.
“I believe Lewis is very quick on the track and the car was good today as well. But I don’t want to set my expectations too high”, he says.
“If you manage to put together a good lap, with the tires in the right window, no traffic, then you’re right in there”, Wolff continues.
“But if that doesn’t happen, you could quickly end up tenth. And as we’ve seen, there’s just a tenth between second place and twelfth. It’s a bit random, really.”
Traffic is definitely a concern in Monaco, as we’ve seen during FP3 or in Formula 2 quali session, when Ritomo Miyata’s car almost stopped in the tunnel. Isack Hadjar showed excellent skills and managed to avoid him, but the tragedy was just around the corner.
“We’re practically waiting for an accident to happen because there are simply too many cars on the track,” he states.
Toto Wolff then continues, saying that he wouldn’t mind having two groups during qualifying, at least for Q1.
Another issue in Monaco is the lack of overtaking on Sunday: “We might have to rethink the track layout.”