Toto Wolff says 'I'd need to fire myself' if Mercedes can't find a 'silver bullet' in 2023 F1 season

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admits there is a sense of desperation in the outfit after another disappointing start to the season. The team saw its drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton qualify in P6 and P7 for the 2023 F1 Bahrain GP. The bigger issue was the revelation that the car was now the fourth fastest car on the grid behind Red Bull, Ferrari, and Aston Martin.

Speaking to ESPN after qualifying, the Mercedes boss hinted at desperation from the team to try and find a solution and get back to the front. He said:

"In this team we blame the problem and not the person, and at the end I have responsibilities and I'd need to fire myself if I wanted to do something [to react]. So, we have all the ingredients to be successful -- the people and infrastructure that won eight championships in a row. We got it wrong last year, we thought we could fix it by sticking to this concept of car and it didn't work out."

He added:

"We need to switch our focus on to what we believe can be the right direction -- what it is that we are missing and therefore those data points from this weekend are very important. We have seen on the GPS where we are lacking performance and we have seen where we are good, and we just need to sort out what that is and whether that is sticking bigger sidepods on the car or really subtle things that bring performance is a different question. Definitely within the group we will embark on untrodden paths."

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Mercedes boss' damning verdict about the current concept

In what appeared to be a dejected admission about the concept of the Mercedes car, Toto Wolff admitted that he did not expect the current concept to be as competitive as the team wants it to be. He said:

"I don't think this package is going to be competitive eventually. We gave it our best go over the winter and now we need to regroup, sit down with the engineers, who are totally not dogmatic about anything -- there are no holy cows -- and decide what is the development direction that we want to pursue in order to be competitive to win races."

This appears to be a damning verdict from the Mercedes boss but it remains to be seen if the team will stick by it. If the team does, however, it means that the car will not feature in the title battle for the second year in a row.