Mercedes “not in the fight” - “body language speaks one thousand words”

• F1 Italian Grand Prix 2023 - Race Results from Round 14

Mercedes saw both drivers hit with separate five-second time penalties, with George Russell finishing fifth and Lewis Hamilton sixth.

A seemingly irritable team principal Toto Wolff claimed it was “maximum” his team could extract from a Monza track which doesn’t suit the W14’s characteristics.

“Body language speaks one thousand words,” Sky TV analyst Schiff said about Wolff. 

“Sometimes they don’t tell us the full picture and we have to read between what we see on track, and what they tell us.

“You can really tell in his demeanour that it’s not the result they wanted.

“The penalties didn’t help but they weren’t in the fight anyway, today.

“The good thing for them, though, is that consistently they’re more often there than some of the teams around them. So it might be a track-specific thing. 

“We’ll go to some other tracks and have higher speeds. It’s something they have to work on for the future.”

Red Bull continued their domination of Formula 1 with Max Verstappen winning a record-breaking 10th grand prix in a row.

Mercedes, who were boosted this week by Hamilton’s new contract which commits him to seeking his eighth F1 title with them in the next couple of years, must be looking ahead to their 2024 car now.

“Yes, totally, by now you have to be,” Nico Rosberg said. 

“That’s why Mercedes can accept that this is an outlier. They can say ‘okay, it’s just not the best track for us’. 

“They will be focused on getting the best from Singapore where they have much higher hopes.”