The “throwing in at every grand prix” days, as Wolff described them, are over and teams must now conform to a cost cap when it comes to planning upgrades.
Mercedes’ position at the top of both championships would make them ideally want to continue to upgrade in order to maintain that advantage but doing so threatens not only breaking the cost cap but also putting yourself on the back foot for the start of next season.
There is also the added complexity of Malaysia being added to the schedule which will play host to the Bahrain Grand Prix in lieu of the usual venue.
Wolff said with the cost cap in mind, the team has to target when they think upgrades will have the “biggest impact” on performance.
“We need to be really strategic about when to bring the upgrades,” he said. “When do we think they will have the biggest impact on performance?
“Rather than just throwing it in at every grand prix like in the past, you cannot do this so you will have to eventually put an upgrade in and probably you leapfrog a little with the others and then it flattens out and the other ones coming stronger.
“So we’re bringing upgrades; we’re closely monitoring how much we can bring, and at the moment, cost cap wise, we’re in a good spot. We have tried to have it a little bit more in the second half of the season and let’s see if there’s enough.”
As for Malaysia in particular, Wolff said it was not about the new venue and more about planning for a whole season.
“That all has an influence,” he said. “Obviously, going to Malaysia is fantastic, but we also, you know, we have to still monitor the costs that we have as a team. It’s not related to Malaysia. It’s more about when can we bring the upgrades.”
While Kimi Antonelli looks Mercedes’ best bet for the Drivers’ title, deputy team principal Bradley Lord suggested it was too early to start thinking about team orders.
“We’ve seen the fight swing, sort of all the way out to the point where I think all of you know it was being written that there was only one possible winner of the championship, and then, in the space of three races, we’ve seen that swing completely the other way as well,” Lord said of this year’s title battle.
“We’re at the halfway stage, and it’s far too early to even be thinking like that. We’re not focused on the ‘what if?’ scenario.
“We want to win both championships, absolutely, and we’ll give ourselves the best chance of doing that by getting two cars to the finish as often as possible in the highest possible positions that we can, which is what we’ve failed to do at every single race so far this year.”
