F1 News: Toto Wolff Reveals Ignored Mercedes Area - "Need To Ramp Our Game Out There"

Red Bull has aced the area that Mercedes ignored a few years ago.

Mercedes team principal and CEO Toto Wolff revealed that his team fell back with its pit times during its era of Formula 1 dominance from 2014 to 2021. Though the team took it lightly back then, the team boss insists that it is high time the squad gets competitive with its pit timing to gain maximum advantage.

As Mercedes enjoyed its glory days and races were being won without having to focus on the pit stops, the team overlooked an important area that would return to affect it in the future. 

Even though their car outpaced the competition significantly, sluggish pit stops were inconsequential as they were winning regardless. However, with Red Bull seizing supremacy from Mercedes at the close of 2021, the importance of pit stop times has become more critical than ever.

The Milton Keynes outfit not only engineered a car that shattered numerous records in the past two years but also maximized every second by establishing a record pit stop time. The team spared no effort in securing victories with absolute dominance.

However, the record for the fastest pit stop was broken by McLaren while pitting Lando Norris during the Qatar Grand Prix this year, which stands at a staggering 1.80 seconds. 

Looking at the top teams churn out amazing pit stop times, Wolff accepted that Mercedes failed to pay attention to pit stop runs when it had the opportunity during its era of dominance. Speaking to RacingNews365.com, he said:

"Our mindset for the last 12 years was that we don't need to be World Champions in pit-stops, we just need to avoid slow pit-stops. 

"It is coming to a situation now where we realise because it has become so competitive, we just need to ramp our game out there.

"In terms of equipment and science around it, we will be making a step up to [be better] than three-and-a-half seconds."