Wolff salutes Red Bull resurgence: ‘You need to take your hat off’

Toto Wolff has little intention of pretending otherwise: Red Bull has found something special, and Mercedes has some catching up to do.

Max Verstappen's back-to-back victories in Malaysia and Singapore have turned the spotlight firmly onto his team's resurgence, prompting the Mercedes boss to offer a generous assessment of a rival that has rediscovered its winning touch at a critical stage of the season.

For Wolff, the recent transformation is about more than a few well-judged aerodynamic tweaks. Red Bull has brought its development direction, car performance and driver into harmony, producing a package that Verstappen has wasted little time exploiting.

Verstappen’s performance at Marina Bay, following his breakthrough victory in Malaysia, has only reinforced the impression that the Milton Keynes outfit has taken a significant step forward.

And Wolff, never one to underestimate the competition, believes Red Bull deserves considerable credit for putting it all together.

“Really you need to take your hat off to what Red Bull has done this season," he said.

"How they have developed the car and how it's all come together as a package and then you put Max Verstappen in the car and when he feels that this thing is driving like he wants it to drive then you know these are the results.

"So in by far the quickest guy today, has been the quickest guy in quali and let's see if, you know, when our upgrade hopefully starts to work and land in a place where we think it should be, whether we can be competitive against him.

"But one thing is for sure, next year it's full on the fight between the teams and Red Bull is part of that.”

Red Bull has found the right formula

The praise carries weight coming from a team principal whose own outfit is still trying to establish whether its latest technical package can deliver the expected gains.

Red Bull's progress, meanwhile, has been increasingly difficult to ignore since the substantial changes introduced around the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Updates to the floor, diffuser, sidepods, mirrors and halo were aimed at generating greater aerodynamic load, and the results have followed.

Verstappen's victories on two very different circuits have suggested that the improvements are not confined to a narrow set of conditions.

Mercedes, by contrast, spent the Singapore weekend trying to establish exactly where it stands.

The team deliberately split its cars, giving championship leader Kimi Antonelli the new upgrade package and front wing while George Russell continued with the previous specification.

A different set-up philosophy for new-spec W17

The unusual approach was designed to speed up the learning process, particularly after the challenging conditions in Malaysia had made it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the new components.

Wolff believes that experiment has provided valuable information, even if the immediate performance gains remain below expectations.

"When we entered the weekend we made the highly earlier order to do the unusual move in a cutting edge technology business to have two different cars because we felt we need to accelerate our learning curve, and that was good,” he explained.

“But fundamentally looking back at the race now at the end of the weekend, I think that this new car needs a very different set-up philosophy than the previous car and this is what we're learning at the moment.

"Was it an easy car today like the previous one? I don't think it was does it have the performance that we were hoping the upgrade would bring? I don't think so yet.

"But it was a step in the right direction and in Austin we should see whether we can continue to consolidate that and whether in effect it has more performance because it's crucial for the development direction for next year."

Austin could prove decisive for Mercedes

Mercedes now faces a crucial period in its efforts to unlock the new package.

The challenge is not simply to extract more speed from the revised W17, but to understand how its characteristics differ from the previous specification and what that means for the team's set-up approach.

The next race in Austin should offer a clearer indication of whether the Singapore findings represent genuine progress or merely the first step in a longer development process.

• Read also: Russell ready for break after Singapore ‘story of season’ weekend

Wolff is encouraged by the direction of travel, but he is not yet prepared to declare the upgrade a success.

That uncertainty matters beyond the current campaign. With the team already looking towards next season, establishing the correct development direction has become just as important as recovering its immediate competitiveness.

Verstappen, meanwhile, has given Red Bull every reason to believe it can remain a serious threat. The combination Wolff described – a more competitive car, effective development and a driver capable of extracting its full potential – is precisely what Mercedes must contend with.

For the Austrian, acknowledging a rival's strength is not an act of surrender. It is an honest recognition of the standard Mercedes must now match. Red Bull has earned its plaudits; the task for Wolff and his engineers is to turn that admiration into a renewed challenge on track.

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