Mercedes currently has “many deficits” compared to Formula 1 title rival⛄s Ferrari𝓀 in 2018, team boss Toto Wolff has conceded.

Polesitter Lewis Hamilton lost out to Sebastian Vettel on th🐬e opening lap at Spa and was unable to fight back as ▨the German controlled proceedings to reduce Hamilton’s advantage in the championship to 17 points.

Mercedes’ defeat to Ferrari at a track it has largely dominated during the current V6 hybrid era highlighted the German manufacturer’s apparent engine deficit to the Scuderia as Vettel sailed past Hamilton along the Kemmel Straight. But Wolff insisted Mercedes is not only losing out to Ferrari in terms of stra🍌ight-line speed.

“When 🌃I look at the race, I see many deficits,” Wolff admitted. “We’re a stro💫ng team and but there are deficits which are obvious, which cause us not to perform as we expect.

“The deficits, you can see the deficits, it’s the slo𝓀w speed, and it’s the traction,” he added. “This is what I would summarise as the main weaknesses of the moment. We clearly, compared to Ferraris and Red Bulls and Force Indias, [were💫] the car that was cooking the tyres the most.”

Vettel’s dominant performance led Hamilton to refer to “trick things” on Ferrari’s car, though he later 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:clarified his comments and stressed he was not🍸 questioning the legality of Ferrari’s 2018 challe🥃nger.

Wolff, who said he had faith the FIA was 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:policing the regulations fairly, played dꦬown Hamilton’s comments and believes Fer🍬rari is simply benefitting from the way it is running and calibrating its power unit.

“They [Ferrari] have a power advantage,” he said. “We h♋ave seen that in qualifying, that power advantage is at various parts of the str🌟aights. You can see even if the corner exits are worse than ours, the engine keeps pulling.

“There is nothing that could be a trick, it migౠht also be related to how you run the engine and how you cal𒅌ibrate it. In the same way they de-rated earlier in qualifying than we did.

“We can see they have a slight power advantage and then you add that to our weaknesses out of Turn 1 especially and that causes the double whammy. If you’re not very good at tracti🌱on and you’re being outperformed slightly on power then lap one happens.”

Mercedes and Ferrari both introduced their🍎 final engine upgrades of the season in Belgium, meaning any further power unit changes would incur grid penalties. However, Wolff is sure Mercedes can find gains in power via other means.

“It’s all about understanding the new power unit, calibrating and extracti📖ng all of the performance out of the software, the fuels and the oils and optimising the way you run the engine,” Wolff explained.

“It’s something that doesn’t involve the hardware, and this is an ongoing process so you🐬 can find performance. But there is no s🌳ilver bullet. We won’t find any performance where it adds three tenths to the car or to the engine and then we disappear into the sunset.”