Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff was sounding distinctly unimpressed by Max Verstappen's record achievement in claiming ten consecutive race wins with his latest victory in today's Italian Grand Prix.
Verstappen had previously equalled the tally of nine back-to-back wins set by his Red Bull predecessor Sebastian Vettel in 2013, but has now succeeded in moving into uncharted territory in his own right.
Many fans believe that Verstappen could keep on winning for the rest of the season, thanks to the current dominance of the RB19. But Wolff says such statistics are not really significant to most people
"I don’t know if he cares about the records," Wolff told Sky Sports F1 after today's race. "It's not something that would be important for me, those numbers. It's for Wikipedia - and nobody reads that anyway.”
It could be said that Wolff is just feeling sore, as Mercedes never achieved a similar level of sustained success with its drivers despite eight years of superiority in the championship.
But Wolff explained that was because Mercedes had always run more evenly balanced drivers, as opposed to Red Bull which tends to have a lead driver like Verstappen or Vettel leading the charge and a number two acting as back-up.
“Our situation was a little bit different because we had two guys fighting against each other within the team," recalling the intense battles between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, and with George Russell now pushing Hamilton.
Hamilton caused a stir this weekend by suggesting that Verstappen's team mates at Red Bull such as Pierre Gasly, Daniil Kvyat and Alex Albon hadn't been of the same calibre as those he himself had faced at Mercedes.
But Wolff is certainly impressed by Red Bull's performance this season. Mercedes was only the third fastest team in Monza behind Red Bull and Ferrari with Russell fifth and Hamilton sixth after both incurred separate five second penalties.
Russell was deemed to have passed Alpine's Pierre Gasly off-track when he came out of pit lane, while Hamilton was penalised for colliding with McLaren's Oscar Piastri as the pair vied for position on lap 40 ,for which he subsequently apologise.
“I think both penalties you can justify, so we are going to look at that and how we can prevent it in the future," said Wolff. "I think we maximised what was in there today.
"They both did a great job to make sure they didn't have any consequence for the finishing positions; they both just took it on the chin, got their heads down and kept on racing.
"But you need to be careful not to be too happy about a fifth and a sixth," he added, insisting that it had been a more significant achievement than it might look.
We know that these low-downforce circuits are not our strong suit, and in fact I think we have seen progress over the season from Baku to Spa to here," he suggested.
"The next race is Singapore, so back to high downforce and coming towards our direction a little bit more. It will be important for us to maximise that opportunity when it comes."
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