"This might sound weird": Mercedes boss has a surprise pick for the team's best F1 race of the season

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff recently picked the 2023 F1 United States GP as his favorite from the recently concluded season. Though Lewis Hamilton was disqualified from the race after bagging second place, Wolff picked the race purely because of the progress his team made in terms of car development.

Speaking in an exclusive Mercedes AMG F1 YouTube video about the 2023 F1 season review, Toto Wolff expressed his satisfaction at how the car was performing in Austin after the upgrade. While he addressed how the car was disqualified for running too low to the ground, he saw good performance out of it too.

On this, he said:

"This might sound weird because we got disqualified, but Austin, we brought an upgrade package that worked. The car was performing well, and we were hunting down the leader.

"So now you could say, 'Well, you've been disqualified for a car that was too low', but the genuine performance was there, and that was an enjoyable weekend."

Furthermore, Toto Wolff claimed that he would take a fast car, despite not being tuned to the regulations, rather than see a slow car finish the race. He said:

"I've always said that I'd rather have a fast car that we haven't tuned in the right way. Obviously, you need to finish, but that was the weekend. Overall, seeing the correlation between the wind tunnel and the track was good."

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc's cars were checked by the race stewards after the race where they found excessive wear on the plank. Hence, both drivers were disqualified from the race.

---

Toto Wolff feels both Mercedes and Ferrari were losers in the 2023 F1 season

Even though Mercedes and Ferrari finished second and third in the constructors' championship in 2023, respectively, the former's team boss Toto Wolff feels it was an utter loss for both giants.

Speaking to the media, including RacingNews365, he said:

"Both losers. It's better to be second for the money and the bonuses and it is better to be P3 because of the wind-tunnel time. Ferrari has 7% more than us though, and we would have had 14% more than Red Bull [if we finished third], but you can't get what you always want. You want the bonuses and the extra wind-tunnel time."

Mercedes scored 409 points and narrowly beat Ferrari to secure second place in the table. The Prancing Horse managed to score 406 points.