Wolff draws a line under 'painful' Bahrain loss

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Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has admitted that losing to Ferrari in Bahrain had been painful. But he said the team aimed to put that behind them with weekend in Sochi.

"You need to be able to draw a line under a tough weekend," Wolff said this week. "It's very painful to lose a race like that.

"Second and third place is definitely not a disaster," he pointed out. "But if you have a car and two drivers capable of winning races and it hasn't materialised, then it feels painful. And this is how it should feel.

Wolff said that it was far from being all bad news.

"The close fight between Ferrari and Mercedes is something that is interesting for the fans. It's interesting for us too. This is why we go racing - because we're racers and we thrive on the competition and the battle."

As for why Mercedes lost out to Ferrari in Bahrain, Wolff said that the team was learning from its mistakes.

"There were too many marginal losses that we encountered," he explained. "These cost us the victory. But they are down to us to fix.

"We know what weaknesses we need to tackle and where we need to be even more diligent for the coming races in order to win. You have to confront each issue, analyse it properly and come up with a plan for how to avoid repeating those mistakes in the future.

"This is an exercise which we have done a number of times over the last few years.

Mercedes' era of dominance is over - Wolff

Wolff added that the danger was for the team to become fixated with the problems, rather than looking forward to the next race.

"You need to be careful not to spend too much time thinking about these setbacks, but rather work on solutions for the future. That's important.

"Of course, you need to keep both feet on the ground."

And this weekend's race at Sochi Autodrom presented a new chance for Mercedes to immediately fight back after the disappointment of Bahrain.

"It's a totally different kind of track this weekend in Sochi and, in this season with these new regulations, you can't take anything for granted.

"The trophies of previous years don't guarantee that we'll be winning in Russia when you have a very fierce competitor like we do in Ferrari.

"We'll take it one step at a time, start the weekend well and hopefully have a good result on Sunday."

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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.