Wolff worried over Mercedes' "hair-in-the-soup" struggles

Toto Wolff has revealed to being worried "a lot" by Mercedes' pre-season form that has placed the team on the backfoot going into the new Formula 1 campaign.

Mercedes emerged from a troubled three days at the Bahrain International Circuit clearly languishing behind Red Bull on pace and with the twitchy rear of its W12 making the car unstable.

The new regulations that have curbed downforce have seemingly taxed Mercedes' engineering department and left it with an uphill struggle to get on par with Red Bull ahead of the season-opening race in Bahrain later this month.

Asked in an interview with Formula1.com what had worried him over the past few days, Wolff replied: "A lot! I always worry, sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons.

"But pre-season testing is always exciting because you always find the hair in the soup - things that are not good, and we had quite some struggle in the first two days."

Valtteri Bottas initially spent most of his first day's running confined to the garage with a gearbox issue, following which Hamilton spun twice as the rear instability appeared to take a stranglehold.

The problems left many pondering whether Mercedes had erred and been complacent by not conducting a shakedown test via a permissible filming day before heading to Bahrain.

"It’s not a matter of complacency,” insisted Wolff. “There’s a reason why there are not many teams winning world championships or doing it with consecutive championships.

"It’s an organisation that needs to stay energised and motivated at all times, and it’s not trivial.

“The shakedown, if it’s done in the right conditions, allows you to understand a little bit more, but our failures in the first days were not down to doing, or not doing, a shakedown."

Wolff concedes the next steps for the team will be to "crunch the data” in the hope of trying to understand the problems incurred and how to overcome them.

“[We will] Try to understand where we performed well, and where not, where we had good correlation to our simulations and the [wind]tunnel and where not," added Wolff.

"Just generally, it’s like sleeping overnight on an idea. Next day you wake up more intelligent.”

Wolff at least knows he has two drivers in Hamilton and Bottas he can rely on to keep cool heads despite the mini-crisis.

"We've been with each other for a long time," said Wolff. "They know the team and the strengths and weaknesses.

"I guess we have a calmness that has always helped us, even in moments where it was not easy."

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