Toto Wolff, the Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport, was delighted to see his Mercedes AMG PETRONAS team take a 1-2 finish at the Hungaroring on Sunday, especially as the last two years have not seen the results they desired come to them.
The team saw Red Bull triumph in 2014 with Daniel Ricciardo, while Sebastian Vettel took the victory in 2015 for Ferrari, so seeing Lewis Hamilton triumph ahead of Nico Rosberg on Sunday was a perfect way to show off their current domination of Formula 1.
“We’re delighted with today’s result,” said Wolff. “To take a one-two finish at a circuit that hasn’t been so good to us in the past two years is really satisfying.
“This place has been Red Bull and Ferrari territory, so it just shows what a great place we have got to with our chassis and engine package that we were able to take such a strong finish and control the race like we did.”
Wolff felt his drivers did a great job with tyre management at the Hungaroring on Sunday, especially with the increased temperatures of race day making the job harder, but in the end the team had a comfortable margin over the chasing pack.
“It was a race that needed a lot of management and we had told the drivers all weekend that winning would depend on making the tyres last,” said Wolff.
“They both did this really well – though when things got a bit close for comfort in the second stint, we asked Lewis to pick up the pace and he responded well to build the gap we needed after Red Bull rolled the dice with Ricciardo’s strategy.
“The back markers were a challenge like always here, particularly some of the usual suspects, but they didn’t end up influencing the outcome which was good.”
