Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff says the pressure of this year’s championship is nothing like 2016

This is not the first time that Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff has been annoying about a Formula 1 season finale.

This year’s battle between Mercedes Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull Max Verstappen will culminate on Sunday at the F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The two drivers enter the winner-take-all race with the same number of points.

The championship calculation is simple:

• The driver with the highest score in Sunday’s race between Hamilton and Verstappen wins the title (think NASCAR Championship Four).

• However, if both drivers retire early or both have problems with the car and do not get into the points (Top 10), Verstappen has the tie-breaker for the most wins (Verstappen has 9 wins this year, Hamilton 8).

The wildcard:

• Should Verstappen and Hamilton collapse and neither make it into the top 10, the championship could be based on a steward’s decision. If race stewards or FIA race director Michael Masi Verstappen rule, or if Hamilton is at fault in a crash situation, a penalty could be imposed – and that penalty could include a point deduction and ultimately decide the championship.

As crazy and stressful as it all may seem, Mercedes Wolff said 2016 was worse on the pressure scale. That year, Hamilton fought for the championship with his then teammate Nico Rosberg.

Toto Wolff (left) from Mercedes and Christian Horner (right) from Red Bull smiled at a media event on Friday.

Bryn LennonGetty Images

Hamilton won the final in 2016, Rosberg finished second. However, in Wolff’s fourth year with Mercedes, Rosberg still held Hamilton behind with five points for the championship.

“I would say that maybe the situation was more intense in 2016 because when you have a rivalry and a fight within the team it was very, very trying to manage both sides of the garage and obviously not being one-sided, but everything keep it transparent. ” , very difficult, “said Wolff on Friday in Abu Dhabi.” Besides, I was still very much in my junior year for myself, so I don’t want to go back to the difficulties of this relationship or this situation there.

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“There are a lot of things I would do differently today and this one is just a fierce battle between teams and drivers who have done a really great job.”

Wolff said the fact that it was such an outlier for the top Red Bull and Mercedes drivers this year made a different feeling in 2021 as well.

“Sometimes in the races with the two or three leading drivers we were 45 seconds ahead, as if we were almost the whole field,” said Wolff. “And that shouldn’t sound arrogant in any way, but it shows the pressure we all put on to win it. It’s probably a level that has certainly never been seen in my years at Mercedes.”

The pressure is great for Red Bull boss Christian Horner. Red Bull is fighting for its first drivers ‘championship since Sebastian Vettel in 2013. That was also Red Bull’s last constructors’ championship.

This year’s challenge for Red Bull is possibly the greatest team and driver in Formula 1 history. A championship on Sunday makes Hamilton the all-time leader in career championships. In terms of overall victories, he is already leading with 103.

“Lewis is a seven-time world champion, he is the most successful driver of all time, he obviously has a place in the sport and what he says carries a lot of weight,” Horner told him to put Max under pressure this year. He’s a competitive animal, you won’t be a seven-time world champion if you’re not a competitor like him.

“Yes, I think – and supported by the Mercedes media machine – there was enormous pressure on Max. With Max, you have to remember that he’s just a young lad. He’s a 24 year old who drives with courage, passion, skill and determination and he’s just the kind of guy who lives his dream and does his job. And he not only meets Lewis, but also a huge machine in Mercedes-Benz.

“I think it’s thanks to him for how he handled that pressure this year and was not drawn in, was not drawn in, he just went about his business and he didn’t move from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia or how he goes racing . “

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