Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes sets up group to investigate Singapore

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Mercedes has set up an internal group to investigate its poor Singapore performance, says executive director Toto Wolff.

Having been dominant at the majority of circuits, Mercedes was bizarrely off the pace in Singapore last weekend as it was outqualified by 1.5s as Sebastian Vettel took pole position and comfortably beaten in the race. However, the team bounced back during qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix to lock out the front row once again.

Asked if he could explain the major fluctuation in form from one week to the next, Wolff revealed the Singapore performance has resulted in a group being created within Mercedes to investigate the struggles.

”You need to be careful because it’s back-to-back races and you’re not sucked into a post-race investigation that compromises the preparation for the next race,” Wolff said. “We have launched a group to investigate Singapore and as expected there is not one single answer but many factors that contribute towards the car not being competitive enough.

“We somehow have enough of an explanation for ourselves to park it there for the group that is presently in Suzuka and then make sure that on the soft tyre and on high-downforce tracks it doesn’t occur any more.

“But as with any other car, there are tracks where you are looking very good and tracks where you are looking less good and Singapore last year in qualifying that was probably our weakest track and we should have looked at it last year. But we will make sure going forward that we put more emphasis on high-downforce tracks.”

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AS IT HAPPENED: Japanese Grand Prix Qualifying

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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.