Toto Wolff bats off ‘complete failure’ accusation as Mercedes hunt F1 title in 2026 | F1 | Sport
Toto Wolff has denied that the ground-effect era was a total failure for the Mercedes F1 organisation, despite ending the four-year stint without a World Championship to show for their efforts.
The Silver Arrows carried momentum into the 2022 campaign after winning the Constructors’ Championship and narrowly falling short of clinching Lewis Hamilton’s eighth Drivers’ Championship crown in Abu Dhabi after a titanic battle with Max Verstappen.
However, after adopting a bold development philosophy, Mercedes started the new technical regulations on a different page to rivals Ferrari and Red Bull, with the Milton Keynes squad eventually putting daylight between themselves and their Italian rivals en route to a comfortable World Championship sweep.
Over the years that followed, Mercedes returned to occasional race-win contention, with Hamilton and George Russell combining for seven Grand Prix victories between 2022 and 2025. Despite failing to win a title, team principal Wolff denies that the era was a write-off for his team.
“We failed to win a world championship – but it was a P2, P3, P4, P2,” Wolff said. “That is not a complete failure. When you look at those stats in 20 years, it looks solid and respectable. But obviously now and in the moment, there is nothing to be happy about because there has always been a team that was far ahead in all of those four years.”
Wolff didn’t shy away from the strong results of rivals Red Bull and McLaren. The latter started the 2023 campaign with arguably the slowest car in the field, but after an aggressive development campaign, they ended the ground-effect era as back-to-back world champions, while landing Lando Norris a maiden F1 title.
“We got off to a wrong start at the beginning,” Wolff continued. “We tried to solve problem by problem. Whilst peeling off and sorting out those problems, new problems occurred. And we were never able to correlate, understand.
“We had false dawns and lots of kind of theories, but never one that would give us an edge to fight for a world championship. And our competitors have just done a better job. You look at McLaren and how we turned the car around three years ago. And then you look at the Red Bull, who had ups and downs.
“But what has happened since the summer is clearly an understanding, or at least an example of how you can find out what is not working and turning a campaign around massively. We have actually never been able to do that in four years.”
