---
title: "Wolff says defeat to Red Bull in Abu Dhabi ‘a slap on the wrist’ for Mercedes"
canonical: "https://readmotorsport.com/2020/12/14/wolff-says-defeat-to-red-bull-in-abu-dhabi-a-slap-on-the-wrist-for-mercedes/"
type: "post"
language: "en-GB"
author: "Hamilton Lyndon-Griffiths"
section: "F1 News"
published: "2020-12-14T14:20:08Z"
modified: "2020-12-14T14:32:28Z"
---

# Wolff says defeat to Red Bull in Abu Dhabi ‘a slap on the wrist’ for Mercedes

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says his team’s failure to beat Red Bull at the final race of the 2020 season in Abu Dhabi was “a slap on the wrist”.

Mercedes sealed a record-breaking seventh consecutive championship double in 2020, winning 13 out of the 17 races in another dominant campaign for the Silver Arrows.

Despite claiming victory at every Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in the hybrid era, Mercedes’ streak came to an end after it failed to match the pace of pole-sitter Max Verstappen.

Wolff conceded Red Bull were “simply quicker than us” over the weekend, suggesting the result acts as a warning for Mercedes going into the winter.

“You can see that everybody has weaknesses, and we weren’t on our A game this weekend,” Wolff said, as quoted by Motorsport.com.

“That’s simply a fact. Red Bull won fair and square. You can see that Albon also had a very good race, so they have a very good race car, and shows that when their car is in the right place, both drivers do a really good job.

“Probably Albon’s pace was quicker than us by the end. They could have been well ahead, and even worse for us.”

“We’re leaving this race with a slap on the wrist. It wasn’t a great weekend for us. It was a car that has never let us down all year, maybe apart from this last weekend.”

Wolff said the switch to hard compound tyres following the early safety car period caused concern for Mercedes, who were no’t sure the tyre could last until the end of the race.

“Him and Lewis were looking after the tyres a lot, because it was not clear the hard would last until the end, and there was more pace in both of them,”Wolff said.

“You can see at the end, we saw through sector one, that our car wasn’t simply turning around five and six, and the last sector wasn’t great.

“We just simply had an understeery car all day today. We had a car that is good on Friday, but not good on Saturday. We tried both directions, weakened the rear, none of that helped.

“I think somehow we didn’t get it right.”