Melbourne, Australia—For the 17th year, Mercedes has kicked off the Formula 1 season with a media warm up session. For 2014, the international media trooped over to St. Kilda for event for a short Q&A with representatives of the team.
In attendance for Mercedes AMG Formula One are Toto Wolf, Team Principal for Mercedes AMG; 2008 World Champion Lewis Hamilton and Grand Prix winner Nico Rosberg.
Asked on how they handle expectations of everyone outside the team, who consider them favorites to win the title, Toto Wolf replied, “The tricky bit is we can’t be confident in terms of sheer performance and the team has done well, we have seen that in testing but we haven’t raced yet. So confident, yes but let’s discuss when the season goes on”
That was followed up with a query that, if the team was running 1 and 2, would they be allowed to race flat out for victory, unlike in Malaysia last year, when they were running 3 and 4 and were asked to hold position. Wolf replied, “We are in the lucky situation where we have not only two of the quickest drivers in Formula 1 these days but also two very intelligent drivers. We have a very fair and balanced relationship with each other and we had the conversation before. I guess that we all want to see the team progressing and move forward, but as we are here to race each other. As long as you respect the rules of racing with each other within the team, and I have no doubt this would happen, we are up to race.”
Lewis was then asked that if being favored to win it all sits well with him, Hamilton downplayed expectations. He said that having a good winter test would not necessarily mean that they could run away with the championship.
But with a reported 1.5 second lead over the rest of the field, people can be forgiven for assuming that Mercedes would be the team to finally break the stranglehold of Red Bull on both the drivers and constructors championship.
So sit back, and enjoy the 2014 Formula 1 season. This will be epic!
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