Toto Wolff says Mercedes will have to stop compromising on race strategy when Ferrari is such a threat, even if it hurts one of its drivers.
With no real challenge from any other team in 2014, Mercedes was able to focus on ensuring its two drivers had the same opportunities for victory as they fought for the championship. However, the same approach backfired in the Malaysian Grand Prix as Sebastian Vettel took victory for Ferrari following an early pit stop for the two Mercedes cars.
Wolff says the team has been focusing on delivering equal chances for Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton despite it sometimes being detrimental to the overall race strategy, and the emergence of Ferrari this year will see that approach change.
"The point is that when you have a gap like we had last year, it is easy to compromise on race strategy sometimes because you want to assure you are keeping as neutral to the two of them, as neutral as possible," Wolff said. "And sometimes that is not the quickest race.
"So there needs to be a situation … you have seen the situation in Malaysia where the two cars have been stuck up behind each other on the pitstop because we wanted to mirror the race strategy.
"It could be that we simply split the strategies, if needed, just to make sure that, if you are wrong with one of the strategies, at least the other car is able to achieve a good finish, or win the race."
Click here for a look at the brake-by-wire system which caused Mercedes problems in Bahrain
Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
