Wolff: Mercedes tried the Red Bull concept in wind tunnel - but it didn’t work

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen continued to dominate in qualifying at the F1 British Grand Prix but McLaren significantly made huge strides after introducing their own upgrade package.

“It’s a wake-up call for us,” said Lewis Hamilton, who qualified in seventh, about McLaren, whose driver Lando Norris is on the front row.

“If you just put it alongside a Red Bull, it looks very very similar down the side, so it’s working,” Hamilton noted.

Wolff reacted: “I think from what you see from the outside, which is only half of the information, is that the car looks like a Red Bull. 

“As a matter of fact, to be honest, it doesn’t matter, because only the stopwatch counts. 

“This is what I guess Lewis was referring to, because this design seems to be a good direction. 

“But it is easier said than done and each of us had bodywork that looked like the Red Bull in the [wind] tunnel and it didn’t come in up in performance. 

“So you have got to leave no stone unturned and maybe do it again because another team has just found a second in performance.”

Mercedes trusted their radical 'zeropod' concept at the start of this season but have sinced moved away from it, closer to the direction which Red Bull have found joy with, and which McLaren are replicating.

Wolff insisted that the newfound pecking order on the Silverstone starting grid is proof that the current regulations are working.

“It’s exactly that, and I think we have all been part of and active in designing regulations that would allow over time smaller teams to catch up and level the playing field,” he said. 

“If you look at Alex Albon on a single lap, their performance is right there and with Aston coming back, and McLaren, it’s what we wanted. 

“If you take now Max out of the equation, having said that he is 0.4s quicker than the top eight drivers on a 90-second lap, so that is not huge chunks any more everybody else is within 0.2s. 

“From P2 to P9 is 0.2s, so it shows us that the regulations work. Coming back to us, that is then tough, but we knew that.”