Wolff slams Mercedes performance ‘one of the worst Fridays'

Toto Wolff has described Mercedes disappointing runs in the opening free practice session in Malaysia as ‘one of the worst Fridays I can remember.’

Both Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas were behind the Red Bulls, Ferraris and Fernando Alonso's McLaren-Honda on the FP2 timesheet in the dry - the same positions of 6th and 7th they managed in the wet FP1.

FP2 saw Hamilton manage a 1m 32.677s - over a second off Sebastian Vettel's Sepang lap record-beating 1m 31.261s, a gap that had been the same in the wet despite changeable conditions generally favouring Hamilton's driving style.

Speaking at the FIA team boss press conference, Wolff conceded there was no sandbagging or hidden pace from Mercedes and its ‘lap time is reality.’

"The stopwatch always tells the truth and the lap time today showed that we're not quick enough,” Wolff said. “The car seems to be unbalanced and that triggers and awful lot of consequences and it was certainly one of the worst Fridays I can remember."

Asked if they were falling behind rivals Ferrari because they had not improved their aero package sufficiently since Singapore, he said that they had brought updates but they had proved ineffective.

"We have brought some new parts to the cars and now we need to trace back why that didn't go today,” he said. “Independently of whether it was in the wet or the dry or on the long run or a single lap, we just lacked pace today and we have 12 hours to understand and come back tomorrow and hopefully have a car that is more stable."

Mercedes posted similarly disappointing results including a bad qualifying in Singapore two weeks ago, but went on for Hamilton to take the win, increasing his title lead to 28 points and putting the team 102 points ahead in the Constructors' Championship.