Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff must be humbled by the start of the Formula 1 2022 season with a car that is currently unable to go out and fight for an outright F1 win.

The second race weekend of the Formula One season in Saudi Arabia was another complicated one for the reigning world champion Mercedes team, with star driver Lewis Hamilton eliminated from Q1 on Saturday in qualifying and forced to start the race the following day from a distant 15th on the grid. Hamilton went on to finish tenth in Sunday’s race, while team-mate George Russell was fifth.

After the second race of the year, Toto Wolff admitted that Mercedes must be very humble, but the Austrian knows that his team will come back stronger after these difficult times:

“We were part of the fun battles at the front for eight years, and of course it’s extremely painful not to be part of those battles with a big lap time deficit. It’s not fun at all,” said the Mercedes boss.

“It’s a real humbling exercise and it will make us stronger in the end, even though it’s not fun at the moment, but we won’t rest until we’re back at the front,

“We’re not using the car where we want it to be, so it’s difficult to really assess the lap time deficit. I really hope the gap is a bit closer than what we’ve seen so far, but there are deficits [in performance] in all areas.”

After the second round of the 2022 season in Jeddah, the Mercedes team sits second in the constructors’ world championship, 40 points behind Scuderia Ferrari and one point ahead of Red Bull Racing.