Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Ferrari win good for F1 - Wolff

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Toto Wolff says Ferrari’s victory in the Malaysian Grand Prix is good for Formula One and admits Mercedes was simply beaten by a faster car.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg dominated in 2014 and looked set to continue to do so this year after finishing 30 seconds clear of the field in the opening race in Australia. However, Sebastian Vettel comfortably beat both Mercedes’ at Sepang having carried out a two-stop strategy and a humble Wolff says it is good for the sport to see his team beaten.

“The positives Ferrari deserved to win today, and from a racing perspective you have to acknowledge they have done a great development this winter,” Wolff said. “For Formula One it is positive, after all the talk we had in Melbourne, of a boring race and Mercedes running away with the championship. We had it in Bahrain last year and then there was a sensational race. It is what Formula One needed.”

And Wolff says he doesn't think Mercedes had the pace to beat Ferrari even if it had chosen a different strategy.

“They won the race today. We were pretty sure that the three-stop strategy would work for us, and I believe that couldn’t have matched the long-run pace of Ferrari today, especially for on the option tyre. They have won the race. It wouldn’t be right to say that we have lost it. In hindsight it’s easy to be clever.”

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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.