{"id":799684,"date":"2026-07-13T19:01:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T19:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/799684\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T19:01:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T19:01:16","slug":"toto-wolff-i-stand-by-mercedes-performance-focus-but-now-we-must-sort-reliability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/799684\/","title":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff: I stand by Mercedes’ performance focus, but now we must sort reliability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes<\/a> Formula 1 team principal Toto Wolff says he\u2019d rather have a fast, unreliable car than the opposite, but admits it\u2019s time to weed out the Silver Arrow\u2019s mechanical gremlins.<\/p>\n

Mercedes has dominated the 2026 season so far, taking all nine pole positions for grand prix races \u2013 though it was beaten by McLaren<\/a> and Ferrari<\/a> in a couple of sprint qualifying sessions \u2013 but has won just seven of those grands prix.<\/p>\n

Ferrari\u2019s Lewis Hamilton<\/a> prevailed on merit at Barcelona, where an electrical issue took Kimi Antonelli<\/a> out of the race from second place, three weeks on from a Canadian Grand Prix where a similar problem caused George Russell<\/a>\u2019s retirement from the lead.<\/p>\n

Then, last time out at the British GP, Antonelli\u2019s wheel shield broke, which prevented him from mounting an otherwise credible challenge to dominant leader Charles Leclerc<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Asked if those reliability issues came from pushing things to the limit and whether Mercedes should \u2018bring it back a little bit\u2019, Wolff replied: \u201cI think we are such a performance organisation. On the chassis and engine side, we want to squeeze everything out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’d rather dial back a little bit something that is really good, and fix some of the reliability gremlins, than run behind performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, we’ve won six races out of eight? I lost track. And I’d rather have this than slow and reliable.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it was pointed out the count was seven victories from nine rounds, Wolff added: \u201cShould have been nine from nine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite those troubles, Mercedes still has covered more ground than any other team but Ferrari in grand prix races this season, with 5,215km out of a possible 5,408km.<\/p>\n

At the bottom of the order lies Aston Martin, which has completed 3,753km after taking just eight official race finishes from a possible 18 \u2013 although that has translated to seven out of 12 since the April break, which goes to show some much-needed early progress with the team\u2019s troublesome Honda powertrain.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes Formula 1 team principal Toto Wolff says he\u2019d rather have a fast, unreliable car than the opposite,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[3272,281694,49,48,578,576,577,1881,13813,82,281693],"class_list":["post-799684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-belgian-gp","tag-but-now-we-must-sort-reliability","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mercedes","tag-spa-francorchamps","tag-sports","tag-toto-wolff-i-stand-by-mercedes-performance-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}