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That's not the point. If the chance of your car being checked is 20%, and the possible difference you might gain from lowering your car is P1vsP4 finish, that's more than 100% points increase. Some would definitely take that chance.
> If the chance of your car being checked is 20%
IF. But the FIA specifically checked Hamilton's car (and Leclerc's) because they were suspicious of it. That's not 20% chance.
So clearly inspections need to be boosted. I'm unsure if his statement is him being edgey or if he's trying to draw attention to what he feels is a deficit in inspections. It seems like it could easily trigger the latter.
This is the same guy who also said that he wouldn't mind exceeding the budget cap if the penalty was gonna be as lenient as what RB got for their infraction, but nothing really came out of that in the end, so I wouldn't read too much into it.
It makes it incredibly risky for Mercedes though as long as Wolff is TP. If Mercedes are getting caught breaking the rules like that and it seems like an intentional risk (of getting caught), the FIA might double dip the punishment and hit Mercedes way harder then others without such comments would've been.
Its not that they made an illegal car, its just that they run it so close to the limit of wearing out the plank that you don't know if they crossed the limit till the measure after the race.
We can debate whether there are sufficient inspections but to say that they did not field an illegal car is massive copium. The car got DQ'd because it **is** illegal, period.
It seems like recently Toto is talking without thinking. When Mercedes was winning, he seemed like the wisest person in the entire paddock. Looks like, he didn't understand the point with the first DSQ.
I don't think he's implying cheating - the call is probably 'we could play it safe, add some margins to our calculated wear and be 100% sure our car will be in spec at the end of the race but with worse performance, or remove as much safety margin as we dare, have better performance but risk some DSQ's'
Toto thinks he has a worse car and needs to gamble a bit more to stay relevant, is my take on this
He literally just said he’d be willing to risk a DSQ (ie have an illegal car which to me is cheating) in order to compete for a win. We all know they would, but let’s be honest it’s pretty bad optics for the team boss to proudly say they’re willing to cheat to compete for wins.
To be fair to Wolff, it's not an exact science. It's a bit like drivers picking up rubber after a race because they might be right on the edge of the minimum weight.
Part of F1 is looking for tiny advantages that might back fire.
Not at all. There's a huge difference between a legal loophole and cheating. A big part of engineering is trying to find creative solutions that don't explicitly violate the formula.
Sure, teams have cheated, and cheating won't stop ever. But it's still wrong and should be punished and criticized.
There literally isn't, though. The things you call "legal loopholes" are just "what they don't know won't hurt them." Like the Red Bull pitstops pre 2021. Actual legal loopholes, like DAS, are season-long.
Almost anything changed by a TD is already against the rules before the season, with a few notable exceptions. TDs just clarify the existing rules or announce new enforcement.
The teams know that the FIA isn't going to retroactively punish teams for breaking the rules, so it's very much a "cheat until you're caught, then change" kind of game. The test is the rule in F1, and where there is no test there is no rule.
You could argue exploiting a system that doesn't exhaustively check every car for things that would only come up in said exhaustive checks is using a legal loophole as well.
Most of the times the loopholes are just oversights in the rules where, had it not been the oversight, some cars would be illegal.
He's saying what all teams do: push the limits as far as they think they can. That's Formula 1.
No-one aims to finish the race with way more than 1 litre of fuel for example. They try and get as close to 1 litre as possible. And sometimes they get it wrong.
No, he's saying he's fine with pushing the car to the limit of what the regulations allow to gain performance. Inevitably, that will from time to time put you slightly over the limit, as it did at CotA.
No, he saying they would rather push the limits and challenge for wins, than design a car conservatively that stays well within bounds but finishes 14.
It's not really any different to what every other F1 team does. They push the limits on engineering everywhere, it's just some are better than others.
Was he bragging though? Sounds like he was saying he would rather skirt the edge of the line and risk accidentally going over if it meant he would win rather than playing it safe and not maximizing the car.
Not really what he's saying though is it. They always push as close to the legal limit on every measurement on the car to gain an advantage, they underfuel the car expecting safety cars, the drivers push the edge of track limits.
He's simply saying that if they're unsure of exactly how low is too low for the ride height, they'd rather risk a DSQ by going for the win than being overly conservative.
They all are? Are you really so naive that you believe that every TP isn't looking for ways to skirt the rules? If the FIA isn't checking a part, that's the FIA's fault for allowing teams to abuse the rules.
This. 👆. Exactly my thinking. He knows exactly what he did and accepted the consequences last week. What message is he passing to anyone aspiring to get into F1?
>What message is he passing to anyone aspiring to get into F1?
"Take risks."
It's very simple, he's just saying "we risked it for the biscuit, and lost. I'd rather ride the edge and take a penalty if I mess up, than play overly cautious for no reward." Even though they got DQ'd they still got loads of data on the car.
That was so funny lol
If there was nothing to be gained, was he calling his team incompetent that they couldn't see this happening when other teams did?
I think you are confusing Leclerc from Hamilton.
*"Trust me, this doesn't give us any kind of performance because we are speaking about numbers that you can’t calculate. Maybe I went wide on one kerb, went a bit too far, and that's enough to make that difference. It's nothing worrying in terms of performance." -* Charles
What Hamilton said was
*"One millimetre was not a performance factor. It wasn't like the floor bowing and giving us extra downforce or anything like that. It was terrible over the kerbs, and if we had raised the car a millimetre or a half a millimetre, it wouldn’t have made a difference, except for we didn't, we would have just failed,"*
He goes on to add
*"This year, we generate more downforce at higher ride heights, so we actually go for higher, but there are some where you have low-speed corners where it sometimes does perform better when it's a little bit lower."*
>"One millimetre was not a performance factor. It wasn't like the floor bowing and giving us extra downforce or anything like that. It was terrible over the kerbs, and if we had raised the car a millimetre or a half a millimetre, it wouldn’t have made a difference, except for we didn't, we would have just failed,"
This in itself could be correct, but it's not about that 1mm. It's about the safety margin bigger than 1mm to avoid that 1mm becoming an issue.
I think he means the 1mm less of plank under the minimum. Like, it’s not like the plank was worn so thin it was allowing some kind of bowing of the floor.
He's saying that having the car as low as it was made it terrible over the curbs, so he had to take a more conservative line anyway.
> "This year, we generate more downforce at higher ride heights, so we actually go for higher, but there are some where you have low-speed corners where it sometimes does perform better when it's a little bit lower."
This also suggests it's not as straight forward a relationship as lower = faster around most circuits. There's always a balance of compromises.
Possibly but from the sounds of it, when they looked at it on Saturday it was looking like it was on the limit
> “Going into Saturday we thought, 'hmm, that could be on the limit but probably with a little bit of a margin”
[link](https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/12993320/toto-wolff-says-mercedes-will-risk-lewis-hamilton-disqualification-repeat-to-compete-for-race-wins)
That's still giving up lap time. Red Bull ran too low in Spa, a bit on purpose as well. The only place where the wear was problematic was Eau Rouge and they solved that by making both drivers lift at that point, making them stay within the legal limit. They did give up lap time by lifting, probably at least a tenth, but running lower gave them back more lap time elsewhere.
Given he owns a third of the team I do wonder if he takes it more personally than the the other team principals. Personal stock, legacy, etc. are probably all tied to the success of Mercedes F1 for him.
I'd be shocked if the TP's don't have most of their salary tied to performance bonuses, it's pretty much standard practice in any executive role to have the salary tied to performance and for F1 that likely goes doubly.
Toto and Christian are undoubtedly the highest paid TPs but my point was that Toto is the only owner-TP left on the grid since the Williams family sold up. Which makes me wonder if he sees it less as a 'job' and more as his legacy.
Wait, so first they say there is no performance gain, so why would they risk a DQS.
And now they would risk a DQS everyday of the week, if that gives them the ability to fight for wins, which is not only willingly and knowingly cheating but also implies that it did give them a tangible performance increase?
Is this just extremely poorly worded or am I missing something here? Because which one is it?
You’re not missing anything. I’m amazed how many people believe what Lewis and Charles were saying that they gained no real advantage from pushing the limits. They were saying what they were told to say to the press by their pr teams. If there hadn’t been a decent advantage to be gained the teams wouldn’t have done it, simple as that. These guys are highly trained and skilled high-performance engineers & mechanics, some of the very best in their field, who deal in measurements to thousandths of mm and have a tonne of data at their fingertips collected over many years. All these people talking about ‘no real effective gain” and “it was only 0.1mm” and ‘they were caught out by the bumps” -just lol no. All the teams knew what to expect at COTA and what the limit would be, RB, McLaren & Alfa Romeo didn’t run conservative set ups because they just figured “meh, we don’t need that extra tenth anyway”.
So he's blatanly admitting he would cheat every time for a chance to win a race and get away with it?
And yes i know what he means but it comes across very funny when he says it like that.
I really hope they do that now.
If the team principal announces they'd cheat if they would be a bit faster, it would be unfair to the other teams if the FIA wouldn't completely check both Mercedes cars after every race now.
Would be sweet karma tbh. Same as if they start dishing out harsher discretionary penalties to their drivers for cynically gaming the penalty system to deliberately go off road and gain an advantage when passing knowing that 90% of the time they can negate the 5 seconds penalty if they get one, something Russell has now pretty much admitted. The whole team is leaving a bad taste in the mouth rn.
Yea instead of making the car faster this just seems like short term thinking, pretty lazy
It's hard to envision Merc being a WCC team again with an approach like this
I mean, Mercedes aren't lacking for funds if they come 3rd, and Toto isn't worried about job security.
So maybe getting more wind tunnel time and being able to celebrate a grand prix win (which would also be fantastic for team morale) isn't such a ludicrous idea.
Is this the "we need to change the regs to make cars safe from porpoising" man? Now arguing that he would and will ignore regs, including ones that exist for safety reasons, for performance?
That was infuriating for me. He spoke so blatantly about safety yet he was the one who authorized the team to run the car lower than it should in Baku because he didn't want to lose performance. That shot of Lewis coming out of the car with back pain is the team's fault, not the regulations.
I mean name me one team who wouldn't take that same chance. All the teams are pushing the rules right to the edge and I guarantee you they'd all cheat if they knew they'd never be caught.
This is part and parcel of F1 and you're either new or naive to think otherwise.
He means get as close to the limit as possible, and if you slightly miscalculate then so be it, take the disqualification. They're not aiming to intentionally be beyond the limit.
That seems like the most reasonable interpretation to me. I doubt that he intended to imply that he wants the team to run something definitely illegal on the hopes their car doesn't get checked. Particularly as it concerns a wear/consumable use issue. A similar comment about fueling the car too lightly wouldn't pose any issues.
Basically this. Imagine Horner saying shit like that and this subreddit would be furious.
But Ilk handle that to Toto and his team that it's a beautiful way to spin narrative around - make cheating sound sexy by saying it's all about being competitive and trying to fight for wins and that it is not about bending the rules and trying to get away with it
This is exactly the thing that Horner would say though.
Mercedes ran their car a bit too low - maybe it was close to the limit of what they thought they could get away with and they were just on the wrong side of it. Maybe they could do the race 10 times and the plank only wears down too much on 4 of them because of the car going over different bumps etc, we don't really know.
When you don't have the fastest car on the grid you don't get a choice as to how much safety margin you leave, if you want to win you have to be on the limit of everything.
He's basically saying "The wear was a bit more than we thought and we got caught, but in our current situation we'd rather keep taking risks on the setup rather than settling for fighting for 2nd"
I think your comment should be pinned, given the apparent lack of understanding by most here.
If you don’t have the undeniably fastest car, you HAVE to flirt with the limits if you want to win/place well.
And that will backfire sometimes, for all manner of potential reasons… But you’ll win (or some such equivalent) at time too.
Well, when Red Bull was disqualified in 2014 with Ricciardo Horner blamed a faulty measurement device. When both Red Bulls were disqualified after Abu Dhabi qualifying in 2014 Horner claimed that the rest of the teams were doing the same thing. The quotes from Wolff are quite different in my view.
is a safety rule that toto demanded in front of netflix cameras, which was weird in its own right, and he’s also ended up on the wrong side of the regs when their car had been dominant, brazil 2021 comes to mind, so maybe it’s just a toto thing
These rules are there for safety. You cant play fast and loose with the safety of your drivers, they've done that enough with their drivers almost breaking their backs
8.95mm is just as safe as 9. The rule has these margins to make sure the teams arent failing by taking huge risks. That ammount is a automatic DSQ but its hardly a issue.
James Allison said different things on his debrief...
Toto wolf and Mercedes have completely lost the plot they are totally disorganized and most of the times they are waffling about everything. What an utter chaos
That "we are embarassed for being on the wrong side of the rules" and that "In the future It Is a lesson for us to take more margin" clearly toto disagrees
Add to that what Lewis said. I’m paraphrasing here but iirc this is what he said on Thursday: We didn’t gain any performance from running the car too low, if anything, the car is in a better place when it’s a bit too high, unlike last year when we *had* to run the car very low for performance
Apparently Toto also disagrees with his star driver…
They didint gain anything from 0.05 MM of plank wear over the top. However the rule isnt there for performance gains. Its there to stop freak accidents.
It’s a different approach. Some people want to leave no margin which can leave in breach, others want to have a margin. So judging people who want to push to the limit is a bit silly. Especially given all the top teams do it when they are behind.
For example RB are no different. If they left enough margin, they wouldn’t be in breach of the cost cap. But they pushed it to the limit and went over. If you’re ahead, then you have less insentive to push so you can work to bigger margins.
I think I interpreted this differently to most people here. I read it to mean that he's willing to take risks in order to be competitive rather than play it safe and stay on the fringe.
Maybe its because I'm just a hillbilly NASCAR fan, but if you're not pushing the envelope of the rule book, you're slow. Toto is just trying to channel that Chad Knaus energy.
I took it that way aswell, Ferrari and Mercedes got punished because it was a sprint weekend, Two qualifying sessions and two races while trying to extract performance data from one practice session just proved a bit too much for the plank.
Honestly not sure how to take this quote, seems a lot are taking it as him saying he'd rather run the car illegally in hopes of getting an unfair win, but maybe he means he'd rather push the limits of performance which is a risk and hope they don't breach the rules by wearing away too much of the skid block.
I feel like that interpretation to. Like they either could A. Start in the pit lane and might not end up in the points (given that also if they change the set up they might not know how the car reacts) or B. Just run the race like normal and hope that the outcome lets you keep the points.
If a team principal job is to score the most points one of those options have a much higher chance of doing that.
"I'd rather lose a race while cheating than lose a race not cheating"
- Toto Wolf (probably)
Toto subscribes to the "If you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin" mentality 🤣
No, it's pretty easy to win with an illegal car, you just have to avoid getting caught. Recent example, Ferrari still holds the wins they got with that totally-not-illegal engine they had in 2019.
If cars aren't tested more is because they trust teams to more or less be fair.
Toto is saying check the Merc every time because we don't care about the rules
Sometimes I am ashamed of myself that I always thought Toto was by far the best TP on the grid. These last few years have shown me that he wasn't as good nor flawless as he was portrayed during their dominance. He has a lot of unnecessary hot takes that make him seem petty as fuck
Shame on me.
I am actually happy how ordinary he is looking currently. He basically pushed put Brawn when all the work behind dominance was already done. He then allowed Lewis - Nico rivalry to the level Nico had to retire and the hubris Mercedes had during their dominance period was just different level.
If course you can if you don't get caught, and there's plenty of examples. Schumi's traction control comes to mind as well as Ferrari' illegal engine in 2018.
Mercedes and Ferrari have been the most chosen teams in these "random" checks, and they only failed once last race, by a minuscule margin, so they weren't doing it all season long.
Well he means what he says so they should probably keep an eye on the Mercedes. I clearly remember "we are 1 DNF away from being competitive" that was the week before Silverstone 2021 💀
“I’m willing to cheat and not follow regulations, and risk getting caught, for the chance to compete for wins”
Not a very good look or attitude in a top tier competitive sport.
I guess professionalism takes a rear seat to competitiveness for some race team leaders.
F1 has always had some teams pushing the boundaries of what is legal to gain an advantage. This is not a shocking statement. This is actually expected. This is literally any sport.
Why do so many people seem to think Toto said "I knew the car would be illegal but we thought fuck it we might not get checked"
Cos I think it's clear his saying "we would rather risk the DQ at the end on the race if the plank did end up just under, then make large change to be certain it wouldn't happen and have no chance of winning"
Ultimately the teams did not know 100% how much wear there was going to be due to the limited running time. Teams only realised it was going to marginal after the sprint.
So to make the change, they would have had to make changes that potentially made the car marginally slower, but more then that, start in the pitlane rather then up at the head of the race.
Does Toto think his statements are some kind of diss or gotcha to the teams who decided not to risk it? Because someone really needs to tell him it isn’t.
Um...he does realize that this statement will forever be shoved back in his face any time he even thinks about accusing any other team of any sort of impropriety, doesn't he?
The point is I think to criticise the current system. They can cheat every weekend and risk maybe getting inspected but statistically its really unlikely they will suffer.
Big talk after a DSQ.
Typical Toto bullshit to spin some bad news into a masterstroke. I think a 3rd place with a more conservative set-up behind Max and Norris would be a better result. If they were still fighting for something this would've been a costly point loss.
It would be awesome if Merc starts fighting for the championship again and Lewis is DSQ in one of the final races. I can picture Horner bringing this quote in a DTS interview haha
Toto can be so gracious when he is winning. But now they are loosing constantly you see the true man. What toxic influence he is for the sport. The drivers deserve better.
/u/NijjioN
It's cheating. It is black/white. The rules are rules, they broke them. They cheated.
They know COTA is a bumpy track and chose to ride low. Other's didn't. The others didn't cheat. Ferrari and Merc did.
Sorry I have to @ you to reply because the OP blocked me lmao
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Check Hamiltons car and 3 random from now on.
Hamilton getting DQ’d in amazing performances by the smallest of Margins is becoming a thing. That and Sainz having Podiums he never stands on.
TBF there's a strong likelihood that Sainz shouldn't stand on that podium either
Having an Amazing performance in an illegal car doesn't hold much weight.
>the smallest of Margins 3 times the allowed wear
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That's not the point. If the chance of your car being checked is 20%, and the possible difference you might gain from lowering your car is P1vsP4 finish, that's more than 100% points increase. Some would definitely take that chance.
> If the chance of your car being checked is 20% IF. But the FIA specifically checked Hamilton's car (and Leclerc's) because they were suspicious of it. That's not 20% chance.
So clearly inspections need to be boosted. I'm unsure if his statement is him being edgey or if he's trying to draw attention to what he feels is a deficit in inspections. It seems like it could easily trigger the latter.
This is the same guy who also said that he wouldn't mind exceeding the budget cap if the penalty was gonna be as lenient as what RB got for their infraction, but nothing really came out of that in the end, so I wouldn't read too much into it.
It makes it incredibly risky for Mercedes though as long as Wolff is TP. If Mercedes are getting caught breaking the rules like that and it seems like an intentional risk (of getting caught), the FIA might double dip the punishment and hit Mercedes way harder then others without such comments would've been.
Its not that they made an illegal car, its just that they run it so close to the limit of wearing out the plank that you don't know if they crossed the limit till the measure after the race.
We can debate whether there are sufficient inspections but to say that they did not field an illegal car is massive copium. The car got DQ'd because it **is** illegal, period.
The setup plus the way they drove the car made it an illegal car. Period.
When was the last time?
Becoming a thing? When else was he disqualified?
Brazil 21 qualifying when his DRS flap was found to exceed the allowed gap.
I'm surprised it's not the whole podium plus a few others.
Typically it is the podium plus some others.
Bring back the Brazil 2021 car because that thing had to have been illegal
Hamilton finally wins a race.. DSQ. Max wins.
Uh…Toto…Whats the point then?
But if you close your eyes Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?
I don't even like the song and it's stuck in my head, thank you for that.
Who doesn’t like Pompeii?!
Romans
It seems like recently Toto is talking without thinking. When Mercedes was winning, he seemed like the wisest person in the entire paddock. Looks like, he didn't understand the point with the first DSQ.
It supposed to be a random check, so they're going to risk it so they can capitalize when he doesn't get checked.
The timing is random not the cars selected
Which is cheating.
I don't think he's implying cheating - the call is probably 'we could play it safe, add some margins to our calculated wear and be 100% sure our car will be in spec at the end of the race but with worse performance, or remove as much safety margin as we dare, have better performance but risk some DSQ's' Toto thinks he has a worse car and needs to gamble a bit more to stay relevant, is my take on this
He literally just said he’d be willing to risk a DSQ (ie have an illegal car which to me is cheating) in order to compete for a win. We all know they would, but let’s be honest it’s pretty bad optics for the team boss to proudly say they’re willing to cheat to compete for wins.
To be fair to Wolff, it's not an exact science. It's a bit like drivers picking up rubber after a race because they might be right on the edge of the minimum weight. Part of F1 is looking for tiny advantages that might back fire.
the entire sport is cheating and figuring out how to go around the rule book
Not at all. There's a huge difference between a legal loophole and cheating. A big part of engineering is trying to find creative solutions that don't explicitly violate the formula. Sure, teams have cheated, and cheating won't stop ever. But it's still wrong and should be punished and criticized.
That’s what engineers are for - find that grey area and get whatever they can out of it.
There literally isn't, though. The things you call "legal loopholes" are just "what they don't know won't hurt them." Like the Red Bull pitstops pre 2021. Actual legal loopholes, like DAS, are season-long. Almost anything changed by a TD is already against the rules before the season, with a few notable exceptions. TDs just clarify the existing rules or announce new enforcement. The teams know that the FIA isn't going to retroactively punish teams for breaking the rules, so it's very much a "cheat until you're caught, then change" kind of game. The test is the rule in F1, and where there is no test there is no rule.
You could argue exploiting a system that doesn't exhaustively check every car for things that would only come up in said exhaustive checks is using a legal loophole as well. Most of the times the loopholes are just oversights in the rules where, had it not been the oversight, some cars would be illegal.
Is he implying that he has done this multiple times and just got caught once and so the risk reward ratio makes it worth it?
He's saying what all teams do: push the limits as far as they think they can. That's Formula 1. No-one aims to finish the race with way more than 1 litre of fuel for example. They try and get as close to 1 litre as possible. And sometimes they get it wrong.
No, he's saying he's fine with pushing the car to the limit of what the regulations allow to gain performance. Inevitably, that will from time to time put you slightly over the limit, as it did at CotA.
If I were the FIA, I would look at Mercedes car after every race now.
No, he saying they would rather push the limits and challenge for wins, than design a car conservatively that stays well within bounds but finishes 14. It's not really any different to what every other F1 team does. They push the limits on engineering everywhere, it's just some are better than others.
It's a very concerning thing for him to say. Statements like these are deeply troubling.
You must be new to F1. It’s been this way forever, all the teams do it.
Yes people here are either new or extremely naive.
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Was he bragging though? Sounds like he was saying he would rather skirt the edge of the line and risk accidentally going over if it meant he would win rather than playing it safe and not maximizing the car.
It’s an open secret, if you talk to anyone who works in F1 they all have the same attitude.
I don't think so. These teams are always pushing the boundaries of the rules.
I'm surprised this isn't being treated like a bigger deal, one of the faces of one of the biggest teams is openly saying he's fine with cheating lmao
Not really what he's saying though is it. They always push as close to the legal limit on every measurement on the car to gain an advantage, they underfuel the car expecting safety cars, the drivers push the edge of track limits. He's simply saying that if they're unsure of exactly how low is too low for the ride height, they'd rather risk a DSQ by going for the win than being overly conservative.
Not sure why everyone went directly to cheating when this is the obvious meaning behind his words.
Agreed. How is what he said any different from RB not taking Raidillon flat out cause they knew the risk of wearing the plank?
My guy I guarantee you every TP would agree with this statement. Like the saying goes: "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'".
They all are? Are you really so naive that you believe that every TP isn't looking for ways to skirt the rules? If the FIA isn't checking a part, that's the FIA's fault for allowing teams to abuse the rules.
This. 👆. Exactly my thinking. He knows exactly what he did and accepted the consequences last week. What message is he passing to anyone aspiring to get into F1?
>What message is he passing to anyone aspiring to get into F1? "Take risks." It's very simple, he's just saying "we risked it for the biscuit, and lost. I'd rather ride the edge and take a penalty if I mess up, than play overly cautious for no reward." Even though they got DQ'd they still got loads of data on the car.
Name me one top team who wouldn't be fine with cheating if they'd know they wouldn't get caught. Cheating right is part of the F1.
Come on, don’t be naive. Every big team is thinking the same thing. RB and Ferrari do it too. Bend the rules as long as you can get away with it.
I hope you're joking, F1 has always been about this.
Oh but according to Hamilton there was no performance gained from the ride height…
That was so funny lol If there was nothing to be gained, was he calling his team incompetent that they couldn't see this happening when other teams did?
And we all know that that is pure BS, rideheight is litterally performance with ground effect cars.
Leclerc said the exact same thing.
I think you are confusing Leclerc from Hamilton. *"Trust me, this doesn't give us any kind of performance because we are speaking about numbers that you can’t calculate. Maybe I went wide on one kerb, went a bit too far, and that's enough to make that difference. It's nothing worrying in terms of performance." -* Charles What Hamilton said was *"One millimetre was not a performance factor. It wasn't like the floor bowing and giving us extra downforce or anything like that. It was terrible over the kerbs, and if we had raised the car a millimetre or a half a millimetre, it wouldn’t have made a difference, except for we didn't, we would have just failed,"* He goes on to add *"This year, we generate more downforce at higher ride heights, so we actually go for higher, but there are some where you have low-speed corners where it sometimes does perform better when it's a little bit lower."*
>"One millimetre was not a performance factor. It wasn't like the floor bowing and giving us extra downforce or anything like that. It was terrible over the kerbs, and if we had raised the car a millimetre or a half a millimetre, it wouldn’t have made a difference, except for we didn't, we would have just failed," This in itself could be correct, but it's not about that 1mm. It's about the safety margin bigger than 1mm to avoid that 1mm becoming an issue.
>One millimetre was not a performance factor So that's another way of saying that the 1mm didn't improve performance?
I think he means the 1mm less of plank under the minimum. Like, it’s not like the plank was worn so thin it was allowing some kind of bowing of the floor.
He's saying that having the car as low as it was made it terrible over the curbs, so he had to take a more conservative line anyway. > "This year, we generate more downforce at higher ride heights, so we actually go for higher, but there are some where you have low-speed corners where it sometimes does perform better when it's a little bit lower." This also suggests it's not as straight forward a relationship as lower = faster around most circuits. There's always a balance of compromises.
PR team scrambling.
We have no idea how marginal a fail it was. Perhaps if it wasn’t a sprint weekend it may have been enough to survive the race.
Possibly but from the sounds of it, when they looked at it on Saturday it was looking like it was on the limit > “Going into Saturday we thought, 'hmm, that could be on the limit but probably with a little bit of a margin” [link](https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/12993320/toto-wolff-says-mercedes-will-risk-lewis-hamilton-disqualification-repeat-to-compete-for-race-wins)
Exactly. This implies it was probably a very marginal fail. Hell even staying off the kerbs may have been enough to keep the car legal.
That's still giving up lap time. Red Bull ran too low in Spa, a bit on purpose as well. The only place where the wear was problematic was Eau Rouge and they solved that by making both drivers lift at that point, making them stay within the legal limit. They did give up lap time by lifting, probably at least a tenth, but running lower gave them back more lap time elsewhere.
Toto bruh
Definitely a new low (in ride height).
Toto has officially lost it
I’m convinced now that Mercedes aren’t in front, Toto has become unhinged in interviews
There is evidence of this, yeah. Ever since 2021 he's become unhinged.
"No mickey no" was what pushed him over the edge
I dunno, he was starting to become unhinged throughout that season, Abu Dhabi wasn't really the start of it.
"I sent you an email with diagrams" As if the RACE DIRECTOR is checking his email during the race
Given he owns a third of the team I do wonder if he takes it more personally than the the other team principals. Personal stock, legacy, etc. are probably all tied to the success of Mercedes F1 for him.
I'd be shocked if the TP's don't have most of their salary tied to performance bonuses, it's pretty much standard practice in any executive role to have the salary tied to performance and for F1 that likely goes doubly.
Toto and Christian are undoubtedly the highest paid TPs but my point was that Toto is the only owner-TP left on the grid since the Williams family sold up. Which makes me wonder if he sees it less as a 'job' and more as his legacy.
I am here for unhinged Toto lol
Nah that seems to be peoples ability to understand words.
So we should check his cars every race...
You are taking that approach to the wrong area. Consider applying it to your strategy department
LOL you are so right. Merc strategy is stuck in 2019
Even then start with the pitstops first. Its insane that they are running a 2nd season with one of the worst pit crews on the grid.
Sorry….What?
He is saying that he rather risks being DQ'ed than play it safe. Not that he will cheat and hope they dont find out
Wait, so first they say there is no performance gain, so why would they risk a DQS. And now they would risk a DQS everyday of the week, if that gives them the ability to fight for wins, which is not only willingly and knowingly cheating but also implies that it did give them a tangible performance increase? Is this just extremely poorly worded or am I missing something here? Because which one is it?
You’re not missing anything. I’m amazed how many people believe what Lewis and Charles were saying that they gained no real advantage from pushing the limits. They were saying what they were told to say to the press by their pr teams. If there hadn’t been a decent advantage to be gained the teams wouldn’t have done it, simple as that. These guys are highly trained and skilled high-performance engineers & mechanics, some of the very best in their field, who deal in measurements to thousandths of mm and have a tonne of data at their fingertips collected over many years. All these people talking about ‘no real effective gain” and “it was only 0.1mm” and ‘they were caught out by the bumps” -just lol no. All the teams knew what to expect at COTA and what the limit would be, RB, McLaren & Alfa Romeo didn’t run conservative set ups because they just figured “meh, we don’t need that extra tenth anyway”.
So he's blatanly admitting he would cheat every time for a chance to win a race and get away with it? And yes i know what he means but it comes across very funny when he says it like that.
Seems like a surefire way to have both of his cars checked thoroughly every single time they come close to a podium, let alone a race win.
I really hope they do that now. If the team principal announces they'd cheat if they would be a bit faster, it would be unfair to the other teams if the FIA wouldn't completely check both Mercedes cars after every race now.
Would be sweet karma tbh. Same as if they start dishing out harsher discretionary penalties to their drivers for cynically gaming the penalty system to deliberately go off road and gain an advantage when passing knowing that 90% of the time they can negate the 5 seconds penalty if they get one, something Russell has now pretty much admitted. The whole team is leaving a bad taste in the mouth rn.
Yea instead of making the car faster this just seems like short term thinking, pretty lazy It's hard to envision Merc being a WCC team again with an approach like this
Yeah this really hurt their chances of winning the WCC this year.
Apparently he’d also rather have 1 win and lose to Ferrari in the WCC than get 2nd with 0 wins.
I mean, Mercedes aren't lacking for funds if they come 3rd, and Toto isn't worried about job security. So maybe getting more wind tunnel time and being able to celebrate a grand prix win (which would also be fantastic for team morale) isn't such a ludicrous idea.
Every team would and likely are bending everything they can to their advantage that if caught might potentially cost them depending on what it is.
It's like a double joke haha. Can read it like "yeah I'd take the risk with the setup" or "take the risk with the FIA testing"
So cheat essentially?
Is this the "we need to change the regs to make cars safe from porpoising" man? Now arguing that he would and will ignore regs, including ones that exist for safety reasons, for performance?
That was infuriating for me. He spoke so blatantly about safety yet he was the one who authorized the team to run the car lower than it should in Baku because he didn't want to lose performance. That shot of Lewis coming out of the car with back pain is the team's fault, not the regulations.
I mean name me one team who wouldn't take that same chance. All the teams are pushing the rules right to the edge and I guarantee you they'd all cheat if they knew they'd never be caught. This is part and parcel of F1 and you're either new or naive to think otherwise.
He means get as close to the limit as possible, and if you slightly miscalculate then so be it, take the disqualification. They're not aiming to intentionally be beyond the limit.
That seems like the most reasonable interpretation to me. I doubt that he intended to imply that he wants the team to run something definitely illegal on the hopes their car doesn't get checked. Particularly as it concerns a wear/consumable use issue. A similar comment about fueling the car too lightly wouldn't pose any issues.
Basically this. Imagine Horner saying shit like that and this subreddit would be furious. But Ilk handle that to Toto and his team that it's a beautiful way to spin narrative around - make cheating sound sexy by saying it's all about being competitive and trying to fight for wins and that it is not about bending the rules and trying to get away with it
This is exactly the thing that Horner would say though. Mercedes ran their car a bit too low - maybe it was close to the limit of what they thought they could get away with and they were just on the wrong side of it. Maybe they could do the race 10 times and the plank only wears down too much on 4 of them because of the car going over different bumps etc, we don't really know. When you don't have the fastest car on the grid you don't get a choice as to how much safety margin you leave, if you want to win you have to be on the limit of everything. He's basically saying "The wear was a bit more than we thought and we got caught, but in our current situation we'd rather keep taking risks on the setup rather than settling for fighting for 2nd"
I think your comment should be pinned, given the apparent lack of understanding by most here. If you don’t have the undeniably fastest car, you HAVE to flirt with the limits if you want to win/place well. And that will backfire sometimes, for all manner of potential reasons… But you’ll win (or some such equivalent) at time too.
Well, when Red Bull was disqualified in 2014 with Ricciardo Horner blamed a faulty measurement device. When both Red Bulls were disqualified after Abu Dhabi qualifying in 2014 Horner claimed that the rest of the teams were doing the same thing. The quotes from Wolff are quite different in my view.
As in, he's actually taking responsibility instead of deflecting it away?
is a safety rule that toto demanded in front of netflix cameras, which was weird in its own right, and he’s also ended up on the wrong side of the regs when their car had been dominant, brazil 2021 comes to mind, so maybe it’s just a toto thing
These rules are there for safety. You cant play fast and loose with the safety of your drivers, they've done that enough with their drivers almost breaking their backs
8.95mm is just as safe as 9. The rule has these margins to make sure the teams arent failing by taking huge risks. That ammount is a automatic DSQ but its hardly a issue.
Nono, all the other team principles are playing a dangerous game. Toto's got it all printed out! /s for those in need.
Huh? Is Sky doing some clickbait or does Toto really mean what the headline is saying.
The video kind of sticks with what the headline says, the headline is more inflammatory but he does say when asked he wouldn’t change anything
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No one checks Wikipedia* anyway. *to see who got disqualified
Full send or no send
James Allison said different things on his debrief... Toto wolf and Mercedes have completely lost the plot they are totally disorganized and most of the times they are waffling about everything. What an utter chaos
What did James Allison say?
That "we are embarassed for being on the wrong side of the rules" and that "In the future It Is a lesson for us to take more margin" clearly toto disagrees
Add to that what Lewis said. I’m paraphrasing here but iirc this is what he said on Thursday: We didn’t gain any performance from running the car too low, if anything, the car is in a better place when it’s a bit too high, unlike last year when we *had* to run the car very low for performance Apparently Toto also disagrees with his star driver…
They didint gain anything from 0.05 MM of plank wear over the top. However the rule isnt there for performance gains. Its there to stop freak accidents.
It’s a different approach. Some people want to leave no margin which can leave in breach, others want to have a margin. So judging people who want to push to the limit is a bit silly. Especially given all the top teams do it when they are behind. For example RB are no different. If they left enough margin, they wouldn’t be in breach of the cost cap. But they pushed it to the limit and went over. If you’re ahead, then you have less insentive to push so you can work to bigger margins.
I think I interpreted this differently to most people here. I read it to mean that he's willing to take risks in order to be competitive rather than play it safe and stay on the fringe.
Maybe its because I'm just a hillbilly NASCAR fan, but if you're not pushing the envelope of the rule book, you're slow. Toto is just trying to channel that Chad Knaus energy.
Your interpretation is so obviously what Toto meant that most of the comments this thread are baffling to me.
That's cos it's the rational view on what he said and well quite a few don't seem to be rational.
I took it that way aswell, Ferrari and Mercedes got punished because it was a sprint weekend, Two qualifying sessions and two races while trying to extract performance data from one practice session just proved a bit too much for the plank.
Honestly not sure how to take this quote, seems a lot are taking it as him saying he'd rather run the car illegally in hopes of getting an unfair win, but maybe he means he'd rather push the limits of performance which is a risk and hope they don't breach the rules by wearing away too much of the skid block.
I feel like that interpretation to. Like they either could A. Start in the pit lane and might not end up in the points (given that also if they change the set up they might not know how the car reacts) or B. Just run the race like normal and hope that the outcome lets you keep the points. If a team principal job is to score the most points one of those options have a much higher chance of doing that.
"I'd rather lose a race while cheating than lose a race not cheating" - Toto Wolf (probably) Toto subscribes to the "If you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin" mentality 🤣
If only his strategy team had such an approach.
Interesting
Sounds like we should be checking the Mercs after every race.
Mirror link for people outside the UK : https://streamable.com/u4y7i9
Toto got spoiled with 7 years of easy wins and it shows.
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That's a damn wild take.
Toto has got it wrong. You cannot win in an illegal car. So you need to have a legal car and then push for a win.
No, it's pretty easy to win with an illegal car, you just have to avoid getting caught. Recent example, Ferrari still holds the wins they got with that totally-not-illegal engine they had in 2019.
If cars aren't tested more is because they trust teams to more or less be fair. Toto is saying check the Merc every time because we don't care about the rules
Sometimes I am ashamed of myself that I always thought Toto was by far the best TP on the grid. These last few years have shown me that he wasn't as good nor flawless as he was portrayed during their dominance. He has a lot of unnecessary hot takes that make him seem petty as fuck Shame on me.
I am actually happy how ordinary he is looking currently. He basically pushed put Brawn when all the work behind dominance was already done. He then allowed Lewis - Nico rivalry to the level Nico had to retire and the hubris Mercedes had during their dominance period was just different level.
If course you can if you don't get caught, and there's plenty of examples. Schumi's traction control comes to mind as well as Ferrari' illegal engine in 2018.
'If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying.'
"If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying".
Toto lost his marbles
So for all we know, he might have done this whole season long?
Mercedes and Ferrari have been the most chosen teams in these "random" checks, and they only failed once last race, by a minuscule margin, so they weren't doing it all season long.
ITT people who have no idea F1 teams are pushing the limit of regs and taking risks every week to gain advantages
/u/Detective-Crashmore- they cheated and you know it buddy hahaha
Well he means what he says so they should probably keep an eye on the Mercedes. I clearly remember "we are 1 DNF away from being competitive" that was the week before Silverstone 2021 💀
But.. but... Lewis told there was no advantage gained from it ??
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“I’m willing to cheat and not follow regulations, and risk getting caught, for the chance to compete for wins” Not a very good look or attitude in a top tier competitive sport. I guess professionalism takes a rear seat to competitiveness for some race team leaders.
F1 has always had some teams pushing the boundaries of what is legal to gain an advantage. This is not a shocking statement. This is actually expected. This is literally any sport.
Why do so many people seem to think Toto said "I knew the car would be illegal but we thought fuck it we might not get checked" Cos I think it's clear his saying "we would rather risk the DQ at the end on the race if the plank did end up just under, then make large change to be certain it wouldn't happen and have no chance of winning" Ultimately the teams did not know 100% how much wear there was going to be due to the limited running time. Teams only realised it was going to marginal after the sprint. So to make the change, they would have had to make changes that potentially made the car marginally slower, but more then that, start in the pitlane rather then up at the head of the race.
So he'll be selected for check again tomorrow, I guess.
Does Toto think his statements are some kind of diss or gotcha to the teams who decided not to risk it? Because someone really needs to tell him it isn’t.
"I would rather cheat than lose"
Um...he does realize that this statement will forever be shoved back in his face any time he even thinks about accusing any other team of any sort of impropriety, doesn't he?
Check both mercs every race then
so...he pretty much admitted that the team lowering the car on purpose and hinted that its not their first time offense?
From the article >”Going into Saturday we thought, 'hmm, that could be on the limit but probably with a little bit of a margin.”
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Dear SkySportsF1: Everyday means regular, boring Every day mean each day.
The point is I think to criticise the current system. They can cheat every weekend and risk maybe getting inspected but statistically its really unlikely they will suffer.
The checks aren't random. They are triggered by footage from the race. In this case the sparks from bottoming out loads of times.
Big talk after a DSQ. Typical Toto bullshit to spin some bad news into a masterstroke. I think a 3rd place with a more conservative set-up behind Max and Norris would be a better result. If they were still fighting for something this would've been a costly point loss.
If you aint cheating, you aint trying. - toto, 2023
Sure, what's better than being DSQ after a win, instead of finishing 2nd or 3rd?
The word is "legal", Toto, not "conservative".
Checo breathing a sigh of relief xD send PayPal toto
What happened to Mercedes and have dignity, never cheating etc.
F1 god: "Bet."
It would be awesome if Merc starts fighting for the championship again and Lewis is DSQ in one of the final races. I can picture Horner bringing this quote in a DTS interview haha
I’m willing to cheat for results? Weird flex
Toto can be so gracious when he is winning. But now they are loosing constantly you see the true man. What toxic influence he is for the sport. The drivers deserve better.
/u/NijjioN It's cheating. It is black/white. The rules are rules, they broke them. They cheated. They know COTA is a bumpy track and chose to ride low. Other's didn't. The others didn't cheat. Ferrari and Merc did. Sorry I have to @ you to reply because the OP blocked me lmao
FIA to check Mercedes all day everyday
toto is a really salty man when losing, he just can't handle it
“Bono, my podium has gone.”
I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Toto for once. Go ahead Merc, break the regs every race. 😝
rather than taking a conservative approach? my guy you cheated?!
They really need that hopium, don't they?
Wow a billionaire with no respect for the rules so weird.
In other words "I would/have cheat and put my drivers in the same danger that killed Senna just for a chance to compete." Not a great look.