Toto Wolff says the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa was a turning point for Mercedes as it provided the team with the clues it needed to improve the performance of its W09.
Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel prevailed in the Ardennes at the end of August, but since then Lewis Hamilton has secured two consecutive wins and two pole positions, including Saturday's result in Sochi.
The behavior of Mercedes' W09 in Spa's slow corners, where Ferrari clearly had the upper hand, offered the Silver Arrows' engineers a clear indication of what was required to take their car to the next level.
"The biggest learning actually happened in Spa," Wolff said.
"We lost the race in Spa and we knew why. We were really struggling around the chicane and La Source and this gave us a clue of what we needed to look at.
"We went to Singapore to try to find out whether it was actually the right clue and it was and this is why the understanding of the car generally became much better.
"And then obviously also on the engine side we introduced a new engine after the summer and we started to understand and all that adds up."
Wolff stressed however that the W09's speed and behavior has been perfected and refined in all areas, not just in the slow corners.
"I think you cannot pin it down to one single factor and say [Ferrari] have lost straight line speed or we have understood our car much better," Wolff added.
"It’s always those marginal gains that contribute to an overall lap time gain that we have achieved."
Wolff also underlined Mercedes' approach, which is to focus first and foremost on its own performance rather than devote time analyzing its rival.
"We have tried not to look too much on Ferrari or the other teams but concentrate on understanding why our car is not performing.
"We can see that on power Ferrari seems to have a tiny little advantage still, we’ve seen [in qualifying].
"I think mostly we have understood the car and tyres a little bit better over the last races.
"Singapore was always an Achilles’ Heel of ours and we’ve worked hard to comprehend why that was and we won with our own pace.
"The same here where we struggled last year and today we were able to really have some decent laps in qualifying."
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