Toto Wolff says Mercedes are the third quickest team in F1 right now

Toto Wolff has said that Mercedes have to be realistic and accept they are the third quickest team in Formula 1 at the moment and nothing more.

Mercedes have had a few issues going into the start of this season with their car looking unstable at times and also suffering badly with porpoising – where the car bounces up and down off of the track at high-speed thanks to ground effect.

Final practice on Saturday suggested that they had found a bit of a remedy for that and, indeed, they looked better than they had on Friday but, even so, they were still well off of Ferrari and Red Bull in qualifying, with Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen on the front row.

That said, Wolff offered a dose of realism with his verdict when speaking to Sky post-qualifying:

“I think we have to be realistic about our performance level at the moment and that is that we’re third quickest. Lewis has put the car there and for George it was probably us misguiding him with his last outing because we advised him to push but there was probably nothing left in the new tyre.”

Wolff was then asked by Damon Hill where he felt the Mercedes was lacking:

“It’s very difficult to make a judgement. We are running more drag than anyone else and we’re losing on the main straight but not on the other ones. We need to make an assessment after the first couple of races on whether we are lacking power deployment before pointing fingers at some of the areas.”

As Wolff mentions, Hamilton put his car on the third row behind the Red Bulls and the Ferraris but Russell could only manage P9, after locking up at the first corner of his final run on Saturday.

Both drivers will be eager to climb the field on Sunday but whether they can or not is going to be up for debate,