27 November 2023 , 14:03
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Toto Wolff finds the large performance gap between Mercedes drivers "difficult to comprehend".
George Russell had one of his best weekends of the year at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. He qualified fourth and finished on the podium to ensure Mercedes would hold off Ferrari in the constructors' championship.
In contrast, Lewis Hamilton endured a thoroughly miserable few days at the Yas Marina Circuit. From 11th on the grid he managed to rise only two places to ninth and never threatened to cut through the field.
Such big performance gaps have been a theme of the season. So often in 2023 Hamilton has been the one raking in the big points while Russell has struggled for consistency.
And the same has been true for many other teams with one driver shining at a given race weekend while their team-mate has flopped. Mercedes team principal Wolff pointed out the trend as he spoke to reporters after the Abu Dhabi race.
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He said: "It is just difficult to comprehend that good drivers in various teams have these oscillations in performance. You've seen it this weekend with [Carlos] Sainz and [Charles] Leclerc, you've seen it with George and Lewis and Oscar [Piastri] and Lando [Norris]. And the obvious one is [Sergio] Perez and [Max] Verstappen. Perez is not a second slower than Max, so what [is the cause?]"
The Austrian went on to share his theory of why the pattern has been more noticeable this season compared to in others years. He added: "We have seen it swinging in both directions, and fundamentally, I think all around it is the tyre grip.
"If you are able to kind of have it in a sweet spot, a stable flat platform that you start to work with at the beginning of the weekend, then you can extract performance. If you are not there, there's just no performance, you're falling off the cliff, literally. I have no explanation for it, and the only one this year who understood how to drive these tyres is Max."
Verstappen beat Perez 20 times out of 22 this season in one of the more dominant driver partnerships on the grid. Things have been more even at Mercedes but their more experienced Brit has still had the upper hand over the course of the year.
Hamilton and Russell finished the season 11 apiece in terms of who got the best qualifying slot. But the seven-time world champion has been able to turn on the style on race day more often than his team-mate, scoring more points than his team-mate in 15 races this year compared to seven in which Russell was the biggest-scoring Mercedes racer.