“You could see that five races ago we weren’t even contenders for the podium, which looked like the third year of non-performance, and then it clicked,” said Wolff, with Mercedes having won just one other race since the start of the 2022 season.
“Suddenly everything that didn’t make sense, made sense, and the results of the development direction is like in the old days. We are finding performance, we are putting it on the car, and it translates into lap time. That wasn’t the case for the last two years.”
While Wolff added Mercedes “mustn’t get carried away” with their recent form, he agreed with the notion that the team are now “clearly back” in the mix.
READ MORE: How 945 days of blood, sweat and tears paid off in Hamilton’s statement Silverstone victory
“Yeah, it does feel that way, because [in Austria] we weren’t far off,” he said. “If you you look at the gap we had before [Verstappen and Norris] crashed, it was nearly two-tenths a lap, a bit more.
“That’s the closest we’ve been for a long time on a track that we didn’t like so much in the past. That kind of gave us hints that it could be getting much better.
“Honestly, we didn’t think it would be Silverstone, because more stuff we were putting on the car, we were more expecting Budapest or Spa, but we justified that what we do is right at the moment.”
