Toto Wolff – Mercedes missed possible pole by failing to adapt to conditions

Toto Wolff believes Mercedes had the potential to steal pole position at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, but failed to adapt to the changing weather conditions during qualifying.

Lewis Hamilton qualified fifth ahead of teammate George Russell in sixth at Interlagos, meaning the duo will start Sunday’s race behind both Aston Martins in third and fourth, Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari in second and the Red Bull of Max Verstappen in pole position.

An impending storm midway through Q3 affected all of the top ten drivers in qualifying, with strong winds picking up while they were on track and heavy rain preventing a second attempt.

“I think that between P1 and P8, everything was possible [in these conditions]”, Wolff told Sky Sports. “Especially even in the dry front, if you come out of the garage, first of all, you have everything in the strike zone and you are on pole.

Hamilton and Russell were passed on track by Verstappen during their laps, and Wolff admits the team should have asked both of its drivers to start their flying laps as early as possible rather than sticking to their routine preparation tires.

“I think you can see how marginal the differences were in terms of exceedances and temperatures,” he said. “I think we weren’t adaptive enough, so the Aston Martins stormed off, Max straight out of the garage with hot tires also stormed off, and they were the fastest cars.

“We were 0.8 seconds off our previous time and that shows what we should have done.”

Hamilton is less certain Mercedes has the pace for pole, but was hoping for a better result than fifth.

“I mean, it’s the fifth,” he said. “Fifth place is never that good.

“I did my best, I hope we have a better race.

“The car was showing signs of decent performance, but we were generally a few tenths off the best.

“I think the circumstances at the end, the conditions, set us back a little bit more. I don’t know, it’s hard to say.”