- Mercedes
Wolff: Recent success at Monaco irrelevant
Toto Wolff believes Mercedes' recent dominance at Monaco counts for nothing in 2014 despite the huge advantage it holds over the rest of the field.
Michael Schumacher took pole at Monaco in 2012, though he would later receive a five-place grid penalty, before Nico Rosberg took victory around the iconic street circuit a year later. But Wolff says Monaco provides something of an anomaly at this stage of the season and he is concerned Mercedes' rivals could emulate its success in Monaco from the past two seasons.
"We have been the quickest team [at Monaco] because we haven't been the quickest team on the other circuits," Mercedes boss Wolff said. "On a low-grip circuit like Monaco it was where we were able to keep the tyres alive more easily, but this isn't a problem at the moment. I also think the power unit is not so important.
"People say Monaco is always different and I guess what they mean is there is a team which clearly has an advantage and on a street circuit everything can be different. But then again we won here last year, it was the first rise we had, and not because we had been in Barcelona before, but we want to do it again."
Should Mercedes be out in front again Wolff admits he is expecting Monaco to be easier on the nerves than Bahrain given the tricky nature of overtaking.
"I guess we are going to have the same discussions as we have every weekend. If we are hopefully in the front after qualifying how we are going to manage leg one, how are we going to manage the strategy in the race? Monaco is even harder to overtake so I'd rather have Monaco than Bahrain where you can go side-by-side through many corners causing me more nerves!"
Wolff also laughs off any suggestion Mercedes can win every race this season.
"Yes, we will do that and then we will retire! It's just the fifth race. If you look at the performance now the thing that comes into your mind is that it's never happened, could it happen? But then we know races, there's 14 races to go.
"We haven't had difficult conditions in a race, we haven't had safety cars at the wrong moment, thunderstorms at the wrong time. They haven't touched yet either which eventually is going to happen - or not hopefully. It's much too early to think about [winning every race], it would be like losing the plot."
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