Wolff whining like a baby

Toto Wolff and his engine designers have been outfoxed by Ferrari and they are crying like babies. But AR1.com is fairly certain they know Ferrari's secret

Having claimed that Ferrari had a five-tenths advantage over Mercedes on the straights at Hockenheim, Toto Wolff has come close to suggesting that the recent improvement from the Italian team and its customer teams is due to exploiting an area of the regulations that the FIA is unable to police.

Speaking at an AMG media event in Germany, the Austrian, doing his best not to make a direct accusation, made it clear that he has severe doubts about the legality of his rival's engine.

"If someone, and I'm not saying somebody is, because the fact is I don't know, we are not in Anybody's engine, we are not in anybody's bodywork, but if someone were prepared to risk his reputation then there is very little possibility to police that," said the Austrian.

Recall it has been reported that Ferrari's battery is really two batteries in one, no one knows how it works but the maximum output levels required are not being exceeded. AR1.com believes it knows what Ferrari is doing. We suspect part of their battery is a supercapacitor (which we have discussed extensively on these pages) and part is a regular battery – a hybrid of sorts. A supercapacitor is able to recharge almost instantly, which is great for harnessing kinetic braking energy, as well as heat energy quickly. We suspect they are using the supercapacitor to keep the regular part of the battery fully charged at all times such that they are able to have 100% electric motor power around the full lap. Have the Italians out-engineered the Germans? It would appear so.

"You need to rely on the integrity of people and organizations, and we do that," he insisted, according to ESPN. "At the end of the day with all the skepticism and paranoia that has always existed in Formula One we rely on the integrity of the FIA, we rely on the integrity of our competitors, because that's the only way we can go racing on a Sunday.

"What we've seen is that on racetracks that should have suited us – Silverstone and Hockenheim – they had a car that was very good on the chassis side and a power unit that was the benchmark in the field," he continued. "The only reaction we can have to that is not to say 'What are they doing?' but the reaction should be 'What can we do in order to accelerate our own development program?'.

"My mind-set is really that everybody is respecting the integrity (of the regulations) because that is the only way we can go racing. If you doubt that, then the whole sport would have a problem, and I don't."

Though the FIA has given the Ferrari unit the all-clear, there remains concern among the rival manufacturers that the Italian company has somehow found a performance gain related to the hybrid system, the increase in performance for both the works and customer teams following the introduction of an upgraded MGU-Ks and energy store.