---
title: "Wolff urges caution despite Mercedes’ strong showing at Silverstone"
canonical: "https://readmotorsport.com/2022/07/05/wolff-urges-caution-despite-mercedes-strong-showing-at-silverstone/"
type: "post"
language: "en-GB"
author: "Hamilton Lyndon-Griffiths"
section: "F1 News"
published: "2022-07-05T10:05:51Z"
modified: "2022-07-05T10:05:52Z"
---

# Wolff urges caution despite Mercedes’ strong showing at Silverstone

Toto Wolff says Mercedes can be encouraged by its performance at the British Grand Prix but must remain “cautious” with its Formula 1 expectations going forward.

Mercedes had one of its most competitive weekends of the season so far at Silverstone, with an updated package and smooth track surface aiding the team’s strong showing.

Despite the German manufacturer losing George Russell during a multi-car crash on the opening lap, Lewis Hamilton worked his way into contention for a shock victory before ultimately falling short and finishing in third place.

Hamilton’s third podium and first laps leading a race in 2022 is the latest confirmation that Mercedes is making progress, but Wolff insists he doesn’t want the team to get too ahead of itself after the struggles it has faced this year.

“We had some light at the end of the tunnel in Barcelona and then struggled on three street circuits so I don’t want to talk us up too much or be too pessimistic, I’d rather be cautious,” said Wolff, as quoted by Motorsport Week.

“We still had our persistent ride issue all three days which is a key focus for us to tackle but we showed strong pace this weekend which is pleasing and our updates seemed to work well.

“In Austria, there will be a couple of corners which haven’t made our car happy in the past but it’s a constant learning process for us.

“This year is going to be a pretty tough one to win but we just need to get our house in order to be properly on top of the car’s performance.”

With the latest raft of upgrades fitted on the W13, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin believes the added performance bodes well for upcoming races.

“We can take a lot of encouragement from the progress this weekend,” Shovlin said. “We brought a significant update to the car and it looks to have delivered what we expected.

“Now we know what works for the car, we can find more. We’ve got a couple of days to regroup ahead of the Austria sprint race so plenty to do in a short space of time but we’re excited to be going there with some hope of fighting at the front.”

Mercedes has grown in optimism since its breakthrough on development at the Spanish Grand Prix, and after its persistent issues with proposing proved a major hurdle to overcome, it feels it can now solely focus on extracting performance from the W13.

“In the first few races, we were literally just sort of fighting to survive. And the drivers were fighting to survive with a car that was incredibly difficult to work with,” Shovlin said, as quoted by Motorsport.com.

“But we did a decent job of scoring points, actually, and picking up on the opportunities when others were unreliable.

“Barcelona was useful for us because we had something that wasn’t bouncing around on every circuit that we went to. But clearly a recent run of three street tracks highlighted another weakness and, to be honest, we’re just going through it: looking for the problems, and then we’ll try and apply our engineering skills to solving them.

“But I would say that the route that we want to take now is becoming increasingly clear. And that’s encouraging from a development point of view.

“This \[Silverstone\] update is the first one along the line that we started to create in Barcelona.”