Toto Wolff has urged Mercedes to be 'careful' - but is confident his team won't replicate the title slumps of F1 rivals Ferrari and Red Bull.
Mercedes ended years of distinguished success with a disastrous 2022 campaign as dominant Red Bull took both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship titles at a canter. The Silver Arrows mustered just one race victory at the penultimate Brazilian Grand Prix and Lewis Hamilton went an entire season without a win for his first time ever on the grid.
And Mercedes even dropped to third behind Ferrari in the Constructors' standings as their record-breaking run of eight straight championships came to a painful end. Mercedes' uncompetitive W13 simply could not live with the speed of Red Bull's irrepressible Max Verstappen as Wolff's team failed to adapt to the new technical regulations in the sport.
Mercedes' reign as F1's strongest force may be over for now but Wolff is desperate to arrest the surprising 2022 decline immediately to avoid the sustained struggles Red Bull and Ferrari have faced.
Red Bull went eight years without a title after Sebastian Vettel's era of dominance from 2010 to 2013. And Ferrari chief Mattia Binotto resigned after becoming the latest team principal to fail in pursuit of the Scuderia's first drivers' title in 15 seasons.
"Of course we are talking about it, we are analysing what are the reasons the teams that dominated in the past suddenly lost performance?" Wolff said after the miserable Mercedes season finally came to an end in Abu Dhabi. "You can see with Ferrari, they lost the whole top leadership and a key driver... I think that's something you can trace back.
"With Red Bull, it was a fundamental situation that the power unit regulation changed upside down, and no works deal. So fundamental parameters changed. We are looking at that and thinking... we better be careful. A season has gone by in a heartbeat and we can't let it happen to look back at the end of next season and the one after, saying 'that's bitter'."
He added: "We have the same organisation, the same capability, the same funding. The other pillars are still in place."
It was a wretched year for the formerly indomitable Mercedes team who had become synonymous with stunning success for almost a decade. But Wolff insists the poor season will not mark the start of a demise, instead claiming the experience was crucial in revitalising his team.
"We are 100 per cent sure that this was a year that was necessary for us to re-energise and re-motivate the team," Wolff said. "This has again brought us down to the ground, made us appreciate how you win and also understand how difficult it is to recover."
