Mercedes secured their first double podium this season in France, but Toto Wolff admits that from their "glass-half-empty perspective" they are still surprisingly off the pace for victory.
Mercedes secured their first double podium of this season in France, but Toto Wolff admits that from their "glass half empty perspective" they are still surprisingly off the pace for victory.
Lewis Hamilton took his W13 home in P2 at the Paul Ricard circuit, with George Russell beating Sergio Perez to the final podium position in a late race contest.
The result, however, is more flattering than the performance the Silverbacks had hoped for.
Hamilton did not get to contend for the victory, as expected by the Silverbacks. Although there was a short period when he got the lead from Verstappen, the Red Bull driver responded by pulling away without much difficulty.
Hamilton's P2 was also fortuitous with the Brit taking advantage of Charles Leclerc's mistake. In fact, all of Mercedes' podiums this year have been facilitated by mistakes by their opponents and Wolff is aware of this.
"Our drivers don't make mistakes, they get everything out of the car and our equipment doesn't break down. Imagine if our car was a few tenths faster..."
As such, Wolff admits that Mercedes is still not quite there as they had hoped at Paul Ricard.
"I think Lewis was able to stabilize the gap at five or six seconds in the first stint, but you have to be honest and say that when they were racing each other in the second stint, Lewis was not in a position to fight for the win, which is what we are interested in."
"So from my glass half empty perspective, there is still plenty of lap time to recover."
"I think with each lap we collect more data and understand a little bit, so we're putting the little pieces of the puzzle together.
"It's a process that's being difficult."
Sometimes also painful, as Mercedes found out in Saturday's qualifying.
Hamilton finished Q3 fourth, but was nearly nine-tenths behind Leclerc, with the seven-time world champion surprised by the difference after doing what he considered a good lap.
Wolff called it a "slap in the face."
The team boss acknowledges that Mercedes is still lacking in many areas.
"It's simply not one thing: we're lacking in flying lap performance and we're lacking in performance in the early stages of the stint," he said.
"There is something to understand and it's not a silver bullet, but it's a few topics that hinder our performance. Second and third is a good result, but unsatisfactory as we work tirelessly and exclusively to win."