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Toto Wolff is refusing to jump on a bandwagon used by other team principals in the past in a bid to end Red Bull’s dominance of F1.
The team is currently running away with both the constructors’ and drivers’ championships this season on the back of winning all 14 grands prix to date, with Max Verstappen setting a new record by winning the last 10 in succession.
Overall, Red Bull has won 24 of the last 25 races, with the only blemish being Mercedes’ victory in last year’s São Paulo Grand Prix in which George Russell scored his maiden F1 win.
It has led to suggestions in some quarters that the FIA should make a change to the regulations in an effort to stifle Red Bull’s run of success, just as it did ahead of the 2021 season with a rule tweak that dramatically affected Mercedes.
Wolff has no desire to subscribe to such calls, stating: “As a team principal, I don’t want to jump on a bandwagon that others have done in the past of saying we need to change the regulations because we can’t continue with the dominance of a team.
“If a team dominates in the way Max has done with Red Bull, then fair dues. This is a meritocracy, and as long as you comply with the regulations – technical, sporting, and financial – then you just need to say ‘Well done!’, and it’s up to us to catch up.
“If that takes a long time, then it takes a long time.
“I remember people crying foul when it was us. Entertainment follows sport and not the other way around. We can’t be WWE, with scripted content. We don’t want to be scripted content.”
In the Covid-hit year of 2020, Mercedes enjoyed one of its most dominant seasons as it won its seventh consecutive constructors’ title, and Lewis Hamilton also clinched his record-equalling seventh drivers’ crown.
Ahead of 2021, the FIA introduced new floor regulations, with a diagonal cut in the floor ahead of the rear tyres helping to reduce downforce by around 10 percent.
The outcome was that Mercedes was considerably affected, whilst Red Bull was aided, helping Verstappen win his first drivers’ championship in a dramatic and controversial manner in the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi.
Wolff has no doubt his team was the target on that occasion of the FIA rule change.
“I think we probably lost the 2021 drivers’ championships for many reasons,” said Wolff.
“One was the final race but we also lost it because those regulations were set in place in order to reduce the advantage that we had.
“2020 was a super dominant year for us, I think the best car we’ve ever had, but then towards the end of the season, they changed the regs by cutting the floor out, and that was to stop us. You can see the results in 2021, we were not as competitive as Red Bull.
“At Silverstone, we unlocked more of the potential of the car and got ourselves back into the championship, but back in the day, these regs were clearly targeted to re-establish the pecking order.”
