F1
Nate Saunders, General Editor, F1 7y

Mercedes: Car problems still not resolved

Formula 1, AutoRacing

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says "question marks" still exist over the team's optimal set-up despite its one-two finish at the Canadian Grand Prix.

The world champions recovered from a poor showing in Monaco, a rare instance of Mercedes finishing with neither driver on the podium, to win in Canada with Lewis Hamilton leading home Valtteri Bottas. Wolff later admitted the team had worked 24/7 since its Monaco setback to resolve the tyre warm-up issues which had led to the downturn in performance.

Wolff is refusing to get carried away after one strong showing for the team.

When asked if he felt Canada marked a fundamental breakthrough for the team, he replied: "I never feel that. Monaco looked pretty grim but we didn't dive into depression and Montreal looked pretty great, but I wouldn't say that the problems are solved. We understood it much better, another set of valuable data points, now we have to move to Baku."

Though the result looked to be a comfortable one-two on paper, Mercedes' efforts were helped by Sebastian Vettel dropping to the back of the pack early on and Max Verstappen retiring from second early in the race. While Hamilton looked supreme all weekend, Bottas appeared to struggle and qualified 0.7s behind his teammate, something Wolff believes vindicates his caution over future races.

"Less grip," he said, when asked why Bottas struggled compared to Hamilton. "Although we had pretty similar set ups, Lewis' grip level was increasing throughout qualifying and Valtteri's grip level was decreasing throughout the session. For no obvious reasons. These are the little question marks that remain and we have to just get on top of."

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