No throttling back for Mercedes in final races, warns Wolff

Toto Wolff has warned Mercedes' rivals that the title-winning team will not be taking it easy in the final three races of the season.

The team sealed a championship double in Turkey with Lewis Hamilton's title-winning victory adding to their constructors' success at the preceding race.

They are now looking to end the season in style but while Wolff's focus is on the front, he admitted he is also intrigued to see how the fight for third between Racing Point, McLaren, Renault and Ferrari pans out.

He said: "Both titles may have already been decided, but we're still going to give it our best shot - and we will [also] be following the intense battle for P3 in the championship with interest."

Mercedes has only taken one victory from the past three visits to Bahrain, with Sebastian Vettel winning for Ferrari in both 2017 and 2018, but prior to that they had taken three wins in a row.

The race, which sees F1 move from the cooling European climate to the warmer weather of the Gulf region, is not an easy one to prepare for, with two practice sessions in daytime heat but qualifying and the race run later in cooler temperatures.

Wolff added: "It always presents an interesting challenge, because of the variation in track conditions and temperatures between the sessions. It makes it challenging to set up the car and gather the right information when it counts. "We've enjoyed some strong performances in Bahrain in the past and it's always a track that produces interesting racing."

Before you go...

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