WOLF: F1 Regulate rules to stop Mercedes domination

Amid domination from Red Bull, Toto Wolff recalls the time the regulations were tweaked and impacted Mercedes on track.

Toto Wolff believes that regulation changes in the past have been introduced in Formula 1 to stop Mercedes from dominating.

Red Bull has established itself as the benchmark in 2023 having taken all 14 victories so far, while 24 of the last 25 races have been won by one of its drivers.

Max Verstappen also broke the record for most consecutive wins with his 10th victory in a row at the Italian Grand Prix.

While there is no desire to introduce regulation changes to reduce its advantage, Wolff noted that it has been done in the past.

“We probably lost the 2021 driver championships for many reasons,” Wolff told media, including Sportlite era

“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.”

For the 2021 season the FIA made changes to the regulations which would see a 10% reduction in downforce for teams, as they were made to make a diagonal cut in their floors ahead of the rear tyres.

This was done over safety concerns after teams were found to be creating lateral slots in their floors near the rear tyres to generate more downforce.

But Wolff believes it was one of the key areas that enabled their 2020 car – the W11 – be so dominant at the hands of Lewis Hamilton who claimed his seventh title in 2020.

“The 2020 season was a super dominant year for us, I think it was the best car we ever had. Towards the end of the season they changed the regs by cutting the floor out and that was to stop us,” said Wolff.

“You could see the results in 2021, we were not as competitive as Red Bull was but in 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 reset the pecking order.”