Abu Dhabi: Toto Wolff, the Mercedes chief, has welcomed the challenge to his team’s dominance from ‘frenemy’ Ferrari ahead of Sunday’s season-ending Formula One Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
The Italian outfit are the only team to have interrupted the German juggernaut’s untrammelled success this year — Mercedes have won their second successive constructors’ championship with consummate ease — their four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel winning three races.
Vettel has secured third place in the drivers’ championship, with teammate Kimi Raikkonen sixth, but the pair are well behind the imperious Mercedes duo of world champion Lewis Hamilton and runner-up Nico Rosberg.
Furthermore, Ferrari lie a distant second in the constructors’ championship, 259 points behind their rivals, but Wolff expects the Prancing Horse to continue their burgeoning progress in 2016.
“Ferrari is about best frenemy and they have stepped up a lot over the winter,” Wolff said. “Clearly in Singapore it came with a bit of a shock win and it was good for us to see that.
“I think generally they have done a good job and for F1 it is important that you have more teams competitive in the front fighting with each other. As much as you would like to see it as a comfortable situation, it is not sustainable and the better the platform is, the better it is for us all.”
Mercedes are poised to finish the season with the highest percentage of points scored in any world championship year.
The German team have achieved 85.3 per cent of the points on offer so far ahead of Sunday’s finale.
Mercedes’ points percentage is higher than the current record, McLaren’s 82.9 per cent in 1988, and an improvement on the 81.5 per cent they scored in 2014.
“From the numbers it was indeed a very successful season and I am very happy and satisfied with how it went and there is a great buzz in the team and spirits are high,” Wolff said.
“But in Formula One, as in many other sports and business, only tomorrow’s result counts and this is why we are looking very much forward to next season.”
