General
Wolff doesn't hope that Verstappen will win the title as early as September
- GPblog.com
Toto Wolff is under no illusion that Mercedes have any real chance of winning the drivers' or manufacturers' world title. The battle will mainly be between Red Bull Racing and Ferrari, but the Mercedes team boss is not happy with the trend that seems to have started since the Australian Grand Prix.
Ferrari had a flying start to the season with victories for Charles Leclerc in Bahrain and Australia. However, it was only those two victories for the Maranello-based team. In the last six Grands Prix, victory went to Sergio Perez once and Max Verstappen crossed the line first the other five times.
Ferrari must improve
As a result, the reigning world champion now has a 46-point lead over teammate Perez. Leclerc needs to make up 49 points. Ferrari's F1-75 is at times faster than Red Bull's cars, but reliability issues, poor strategy and bad luck have meant the Italians have scored too few points in recent weeks.
Wolff hopes Ferrari will recover quickly because, in the Austrian's view, they are throwing their own lenses in the fire. It would be good for the sport if Leclerc could battle it out with Verstappen every weekend. That would be really good for Formula 1 ,but they [Ferrari] are dropping stitches. It would be better if the world championship went to the end and was not already decided in September," Wolff told Motorsport-Total.com.