Wolff: Mercedes advantage not huge

Si Mercedes AMG F1 emerged as the most successful team at the start of the season last weekend in Melbourne, the Australian Grand Prix retains a taste of unfinished business for the Silver Arrows. Nico Rosberg's victory struggles to make us forget the early retirement of Lewis Hamilton who lost a cylinder on his V6 in the first laps of the race while the reliability of the W05 seemed particularly high until now.

With two McLaren on the podium in Melbourne following the exclusion of Daniel Ricciardo, it is the Woking team which finds itself at the top of the Manufacturers' Championship with eight points ahead of the star manufacturer. “I don’t see us having much of an advantage”, commented Toto wolff, taken up by journalist Adam Cooper. “We can lose a lot of points in the event of a retirement and it's McLaren who are in the lead among the Manufacturers. We have a slight lead at the moment and I would consider losing that lead a failure. We must continue to work on reliability but also on performance We must add downforce to the car by making all the systems work together by improving the cooling and the complete package of the car."

Discover the analysis of the Australian Grand Prix carried out by our special correspondents in issue 1952 of AUTOhebdo, available from tomorrow evening in digital version on all platforms, and from Wednesday on newsstands.