Toto Wolff regarded McLaren winning the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as “a success for Mercedes motorsport.”
McLaren’s Constructors’ title win breaks a 26-year drought for the Woking-based outfit and ends a 14-year run of Mercedes and Red Bull dominance at the top of the standings.
Lando Norris’ win at the Yas Marina Circuit meant McLaren became the first customer team to win the F1 Constructors’ Championship since Brawn GP’s 2009 fairytale.
McLaren, like Brawn GP before it, is a Mercedes engine customer and beat its supplier by 198 points in the final standings.
The result is an inverse of 2009, whereby McLaren was the Mercedes works entry before Brawn transformed into the Silver Arrows’ official squad the very next year.
Asked post-race in Abu Dhabi how he was balancing satisfaction and disappointment in being beaten by a customer team, Mercedes Team Principal Wolff said: “If we can’t win as a works team I’d much rather be beaten by a customer team.
“I have zero problem with that, it shows us where the benchmark is.
“There’s no discussion about the performance level of the engine, no discussion about driveability of the engine, none of that.
“World champions are our customers, we fight on the same terms, if they have better execution, better drivers then that’s completely fine for us.
“This is a success for Mercedes motorsport. It gives us the primary objective to win.”
McLaren is the ‘benchmark’ for Mercedes, says Toto Wolff
Wolff reaffirmed his stance that McLaren is the “benchmark” for Mercedes as it looks to improve.
The German marque made steady progress with the W15, winning three out of four races across June and July before encountering an inconsistent second half of the 2024 season.
McLaren, meanwhile, was able to turn around a car that was the slowest on the grid at the start of 2023 to arguably the most competitive by the end of 2024 and its title win proves it.
“I’d rather be beaten by a customer because then we know what the benchmark is,” Wolff reiterated.
“From that perspective, they have equal opportunity like we do.
“When you look at cost cap that has an effect, you look at ATR [aerodynamic testing regulations], we are fourth in the championship now that’s 20 per cent more ATR than McLaren, which is advantageous.
“This is where they were in the past, but that is not the reason they won.
“They won because of good engineering, simple as it is, great engineering, right leadership, good drivers, two drivers that were scoring and we have to give them all the credit for that.
“Considering where they came from a year and a half ago not even making it out of Q1 now making a race-winning car and Constructors’, somebody wouldn’t have said that two years ago.”
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