The Spanish GP was the fifth race in a row from the start of the season to see every lap led by a Mercedes. It’s a rare achievement, and it’s worth noting that on previous occasions – with McLaren in 1988 and Williams in 1992 – one team proved utterly dominant. In the case of Williams that run ended at round six in Monaco, although in 1988 McLaren kept its record up until the eighth race.
However, despite the flying start to the season Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff remains cautious.
“It’s an honour to be named woth those teams and those years,” Wolff told this writer. “I think the odds are good for us at the moment. Nevertheless, you can’t get complacent. You have to put it in the right perspective. We’ve won five races, others have won four championships.”
Wolff says there is plenty of time for Nico Rosberg to bounce back, despite losing out to Lewis Hamilton for the last four races.
“He’s a tough guy. He’s going to give it a great push. The championship is very long, and we’ve seen World Champions in the past with three wins, or nearly World Champions with three wins. It’s very early days in the championship.
“We knew [in Spain] that the only chance for Nico to win the race was by offsetting them on the strategy. You could see at the end it was quite tight.”
Wolff says he wasn’t worried about some heated radio messages from Hamilton in Barcelona.
“No, not at all. It’s the intensity of the battle. It’s normal.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Why is Toto Wolff doing a love-in with Rosberg against Hamilton, a la the Whitmarsh/Button-love-in against Hamilton? Always feeling the need to bolster one party’s underperformance against the other? Downplaying Hamilton’s performance? Why?
Is it just that people are more comfortable with their own?