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Laurence Edmondson, F1 Editor
MONACO –Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has said he believes any attempt to cap Red Bull’s performance with a change of regulations would ruin Formula One.
Red Bull has won all six races so far this season as well as the sprint race held in Azerbaijan and leads the constructors’ championship by 129 points over Aston Martin.
Over a full race distance, all of its winning margins have been over 20 seconds apart from the Australian Grand Prix, which ended under safety car conditions following a late red flag.
The team’s dominance shows no signs of letting up after Max Verstappen won Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix by 27 seconds from Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso on a circuit the team believed would be one of its weakest this year.
Red Bull’s current advantage stems from a major overhaul of F1’s technical regulations in 2022, which were aimed at making racing more exciting but also presented an opportunity for teams to make big gains or fall back down the order.
Wolff, who’s Mercedes team dominated F1 from 2014 to 2020 but is now in a tight battle with Aston Martin and Ferrari to be second best, believes it would be wrong to tweak the regulations to hold Red Bull back. However, he also drew attention to the importance of staying within F1’s cost cap, something Red Bull failed to do in 2021 when it overspent by 1.6 percent.
“If we start putting in a balance of performance we will ruin this sport,” Wolff said. “This is a meritocracy, best driver in the best car, spending the same amount of money, win the championship and if you break the rules in either you should be heavily penalised but only then but not for doing a good job.”
Wolff said Red Bull and Verstappen deserve the victories and dominance they are enjoying in both drivers’ and constructors’ championships.
“When you win in Formula One it is a meritocracy and they have just done a good job,” Wolff said. “The car is fast in all conditions, the driver is at the top of his game, even today [in Monaco] going off at times but not DNF-ing [retiring] is a skill. You can see that he pushed, so all credit to them.
“We just need to do a better job, we need to catch up, find intelligent solutions. Hope that our learning slope, development slope is steeper than theirs and eventually fight for this again.
“It’s sport, whether it is good for the show or not? Obviously a strong fight between 10 drivers or at least two, is much better for all of us but it is not happening that is why you have to just accept that and work to get back there.”
Source: www.espn.com