Losing to a customer team? It's not all bad, says Mercedes' Wolff

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says this team can take benefits from customer team McLaren winning back-to-back constructors’ championships, despite hos works team being beaten in the process.

McLaren wrapped up its second consecutive title in Singapore, despite George Russell securing victory for Mercedes. That was just Mercedes’ second win of the year as it has been comfortably beaten by its customer team over the past two seasons, but Wolff says the McLaren example proves the power unit is not an area of weakness when his team looks at performance deficits.

“I think that such internal competition has its advantages,” Wolff said. “It avoids any discussion whether the power unit is one of the root causes that the chassis isn't so good. Are we putting too much torque on the tires? Is the drivability of the engine good or not? And seeing a team run away with a championship like McLaren over the last two years is just a proof that it can be done.

“In that way, you look at the car and I think it's just very good engineering and executed in the right way. It's definitely the benchmark of the last two or so years.”

The McLaren title came on a weekend when Mercedes outperformed the constructors’ champions in Singapore, and heading into a double-header that begins this weekend’s United States Grand Prix, Wolff is intrigued to see whethr Mercedes can maintain the form that helped it secure strong results with both cars over the past two rounds.

“We come off the back of a strong result in Singapore, taking victory with George and P5 for Kimi [Antonelli]. Not only was that unexpected, our level of performance across Saturday and Sunday showed it was no fluke," Wolff said.

"That has been the story of the season somewhat, where it isn't clear which team will be leading the way from weekend to weekend. We were also good in Azerbaijan, so we are curious to see if we can maintain the step we have made with the W16 into this next run of races across the Americas.

“They are very different layouts and challenges to those two street circuits, so we are heading a little into the unknown, but that unpredictability is what makes our sport so enjoyable.”

Mercedes heads to COTA second in the constructors’ championship off the back of Russell’s win in Singapore, 27 points clear of Ferrari and 35 ahead of Red Bull in the battle for the runner-up spot.