Toto Wolff admitted his team's "table of doom" tells him Mercedes may struggle to compete with Red Bull at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
For the first time in 2022, the Silver Arrows come into a race weekend as winners of the previous round. And they did it in style, with George Russell winning a Formula 1 race for the first time and Lewis Hamilton just behind him in second place.
It was a remarkable result, considering Mercedes have been a long way off Red Bull and Ferrari in terms of performance all year long. But improvements have been made and that result at Interlagos was a statement that the Silver Arrows are back in contention.
As for whether they will be able to repeat the trick this weekend, Wolff has been consulting his team's knowledge of circuits. "So we have this internal table of doom, which kind of forecasts whether we are good at the track or not in terms of our simulations," he told reporters.
"Mexico was, we thought, the best track in the season. And we were performing well. Brazil was right there, like with Austin, but came in better than we thought. Abu Dhabi, in the table of doom, is pretty much in the middle. It's not Spa or Monza. So if we correlate with the table of doom, it means we understand where we are going to.
"If we outperform the table of doom I'm obviously happy, but also questioning what happened to getting it right with our forecasts. So the truth is, I don't know where we are lacking – straight-line speed, particularly against the Red Bull when they turn on the engine.
"But I would never say we are not in the mix but rationally, probably not right there." So while Wolff is not ruling Russell and Hamilton out of challenging for the win, he is realistic in admitting Red Bull will probably be too strong for them.
And free practice painted a similar picture. In FP2, the one session which took place after sunset and so is representative of the race, Max Verstappen was miles ahead of anyone else – clearly keen to end what has been such a dominant season for him on a high.
But for this weekend to be a success, Mercedes don't need to beat Red Bull. In the battle for second place in the championship, they must out-score Ferrari by 20 points if they want to leapfrog the Italians – a tall order, unless the red cars have a disastrous race.
