Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Ferrari threat giving Mercedes tough decisions

Toto Wolff says the threat posed by Ferrari will give Mercedes some tough decisions to make in the second half of the championship.

Lewis Hamilton currently sits top on 202 points, with team-mate Nico Rosberg second, 21 points adrift. Sebastian Vettel is a further 21 points back but after the four-time world champion took his second victory of the season in Hungary, Wolff says Mercedes is unable to turn a significant amount of its attention to next season’s car while Vettel poses a threat.

"We'll have to be good at balancing the development of this machine with the need to work already in the project in 2016,” Wolff told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “For now we are still 100% focused on the present, because Vettel is just 42 points from Hamilton."

Asked if he sees Vettel as having a realistic chance of winning the championship, Wolff replied: “Sure.

“Seb has a gap of 42 points from Lewis and 21 from Nico, when there are still 225 at stake. As Budapest demonstrated, just one crooked race and everything is reopened. The possibility of losing this title is low but you have to be aware what can happen and therefore it is good to keep your feet planted on the ground.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.