Toto Wolff names Lewis Hamilton low point as Mercedes' best race of 2023 season

19 December 2023 , 17:12

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Lewis Hamilton joined Max Verstappen on the US GP podium but was later stripped of that result (Image: HOCH ZWEI/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

Toto Wolff named the day Lewis Hamilton was disqualified from the United States Grand Prix as his team's best race of the year.

For Mercedes, it was a particularly arduous season. It yielded zero wins for the first time since 2011, thanks to a W14 car which proved too temperamental for the team to make enough progress to catch the runaway Red Bulls.

There were a handful of tracks, though, at which the car shone. One of them was the Circuit of the Americas and Hamilton finished within just a few seconds of winner Max Verstappen after that Texas race.

Later, though, he was disqualified for too much wear to the floor of his car, indicating that the ride height had been illegally low. It no doubt contributed to Hamilton's car performance but, still, team principal Wolff remembers it fondly.

And in a new video released by the team, the Austrian named it as Mercedes' best race of the year. "This might sound strange because we got disqualified, but Austin!" he replied when posed that question by a fan.

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"We brought an upgrade package that worked, the car was performing well, and we were hunting down the leader. You could say, 'Well, you were disqualified for a car that was too low', but the genuine performance was there and that was an enjoyable weekend.

"I've always said that I'd rather have a fast car that we haven't tuned in the right way. And obviously, you need to finish. But that was the best weekend overall, seeing that the correlation between the wind tunnel and the track was good."

Despite Hamilton being stripped of all those points, Mercedes still managed to fend off rivals Ferrari to narrowly secure second place in the constructors' championship by the end of the year. Wolff named that as his proudest moment of the season, while the low point was a wretched weekend in Brazil for both his drivers.

He said: "It's difficult because there have been so many moments where we had high expectations and it didn't pan out as we'd expected. Brazil was difficult because that was such a good race for us in 2022. We dominated the whole weekend last year, the Sprint race and the main race and then in 2023, the opposite was the case. So that was a bad moment.

"A good moment was Sunday night in Abu Dhabi. I never paid lots of attention to P2 and P3 - we of course want to come P1 - but then finishing P2 was emotionally and morally important for the team. That was a good moment."

Daniel Moxon