Toto Wolff believes “it would be really good for F1 to have Ferrari on top of the standings”. The Mercedes boss knows what it is like to challenge Red Bull.

Seven wins in the first nine races, six wins in the last six Grands Prix. The 2022 Formula 1 season is unfortunately passing from a Ferrari – Red Bull duel to a domination from the Austrian team: perhaps not in terms of on track performances, but certainly if we look at the recent race results, and the world rankings testify to this, ahead of the British Grand Prix this weekend.

The 49 points that Max Verstappen has in front of Charles Leclerc represent a solid advantage the world champion: it means that, even if he would always finish second up to Monza, he would have the certainty of at least being on equal points with the Monegasque driver after the Italian Grand Prix.

In short, the hard-fought 2021 World championship risks becoming a distant memory for Ferrari, especially if the Maranello team continues to suffer from reliability problems and continues not to capitalize on the opportunities that arise before it.

Toto Wolff, Mercedes team principal, knows it well and points out that “it would be great if Charles Leclerc were leading the World Championship. It would be really good for Formula 1, but at the moment Ferrari has not taken advantage of its opportunities and has lost some of its edge. It would be better if the world championship went all the way tot the final rounds and wouldn’t be decided in September” – said Toto Wolff in a recent interview for Motorsport-Total.

The Mercedes boss knows what it is like to challenge Red Bull, having fought hard last year and knowing the strategic and communication skills of Milton Keynes’s garage and team principal Chris Horner. In Miami, Mattia Binotto and his colleague from Mercedes were seen involved in a long chat, to the point that various sources talked about the Ferrari-Mercedes axis regarding the budget cap (but in this case also Red Bull is in favor of increasing the limit) but also regarding the 2026 power unit discussion. From 2026 Red Bull wants to embrace Porsche as a new engine supplier, also demanding regulation advantages in terms of money to invest in engine development and time to allocate to dynamic bench tests. Which certainly did not please Ferrari and Mercedes.

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