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Toto Wolff Admits Max Verstappen Was “In a League of His Own,” Wants Team Back on Track

After the short summer break, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team was hoping for a win in Spa, but that didn’t happen. Team Principal Toto Wolff wants the team to get back on track, but he admitted Max Verstappen was “in a league of his own.
Toto Wolff, Lewis Hamilton, and George Russell 6 photos
Photo: Twitter / Mercedes-AMG Petronas
Lewis Hamilton's Crash With Fernando AlonsoLewis Hamilton at SpaLewis Hamilton at SpaLewis Hamilton at SpaLewis Hamilton at Spa
This past weekend, Formula One returned with the Belgium Grand Prix, which saw a double Red Bull podium, with Carlos Sainz in the third spot.

When it comes to Mercedes, things weren’t exactly how they planned it. Team Principal Toto Wolff says that “I don’t think we can be satisfied with that. If you see Verstappen being in a league of his own, it’s something that we really need to find out, how we can improve our car – the gap is just too big.

He did admit that it had a lot to do with this year’s car. “I think that’s just the reality. We need to accept that the car is very difficult to drive, hasn’t got the pace on a single lap, so we need to work ourselves out of this,” Wolff said via Formula 1.

While most fans were hoping for a win, Lewis Hamilton ended the race shortly after it began, following a crash with Alpine’s Fernando Alonso. Luckily, George Russell managed to score some points as he finished in P4, ahead of Alonso.

Wolff shared that the team seems to be caught “between depression and mania” but he looks forward to the next race, the Dutch GP. “That was clearly not great from us all weekend, so I hope that a track [such as Zandvoort] would suit us more, that we are more competitive, but we mustn’t be too much between depression and mania."

He did recall promising to win a race in Hungary, so Wolff added that “we will never give up.”
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About the author: Monica Coman
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Imagine a Wenn diagram for cars and celebrities. At the intersection you'll find Monica, putting her passion for these fields and English-Spanish double major to work. She's been doing for the past seven years, most recently at autoevolution.
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