Despite Red Bull’s dominance, Toto Wolff recalls when the regulations were changed and the impact on Mercedes on the track.
Toto Wolff believes regulation changes have been introduced before in F1 to prevent Mercedes from dominating.
Red Bull have established themselves as the benchmark in 2023 by claiming all 14 wins to date, while 24 of the last 25 races have gone to one of their drivers.
Max Verstappen also broke the record for most consecutive wins with his 10th consecutive victory at the Italian Grand Prix.
While reluctant to introduce regulatory changes to reduce his advantage, Wolff noted that this has been done in the past. “We probably lost the 2021 drivers’ championship for many reasons,” Wolff told the media.
“One of them was the last race, but we also lost because these rules were put in place to reduce the advantage we had.”
For the 2021 season, the FIA has made changes to the regulations to reduce downforce for teams by 10% because they have to cut a diagonal line in the car floor ahead of the rear tyres.
This was done for safety reasons after teams created side slots in their decks, near the rear tires, to generate more downforce.
But Wolff believes this was one of the key areas that helped their 2020 car – the W11 – prevail in the hands of Lewis Hamilton, who won his seventh title in 2020.
“The 2020 season was a very outstanding year for us, I think it was the best car we’ve ever had. At the end of the season they changed the rules by removing the floor and that was to stop us,” Wolff said.
“You can see the results in 2021, we weren’t as competitive as Red Bull, but at Silverstone we brought out more of the car’s potential and won the championship again. But at the time, those regulations were clearly intended to reestablish the pecking order.”
