Mercedes: We are not favourites for Singapore GP win

The pair were comfortably out-qualified with Hamilton fifth and Rosberg sixth as both Ferraris and Red Bulls started ahead of them. The team addressed the car’s set-up at the following rounds of 2015, but Wolff says the only way to know if the problems are solved for sure is to return to the track this weekend.

“Ferrari were mighty around this circuit a year ago and it will suit the high downforce design philosophy followed by Red Bull, so we must not make the mistake of thinking we are favourites this weekend”, the Austrian said.

“Either way, it’s not going to be an easy-breezy drive”.

Wolff, whose team discussed the upcoming Singapore race over the Monza weekend, admitted that an entire season of racing necessarily implied some compromise while the odd race out could not be discarded. This makes it a unusual few days, getting up at lunch time in the local time zone and going to bed at breakfast.

“Monza didn’t quite go to plan”, said Hamilton, who visited the 9/11 memorial at New York’s Ground Zero on Sunday. We didn’t manage it past year and, although we believe we now understand why, only performance on the racetrack can prove our conclusions right.

“There is no silver bullet”. There is not one thing that went wrong.

“It’s a matter of great interest for us as a team to see if we can come back and get it right this time around”. This is why I am excited and curious to see how Singapore is going to work. “We made some conclusions that helped us in the following races and throughout the season, and in Singapore [this year] we are going to check if we were right”.

“You have a team that is doing extremely well on circuits like Singapore with high downforce but they are not competitive on a circuit like [Monza]”.

“Our auto is the best compromise”, said the German. “It’s about finding the best compromise, so let’s see what happens in Singapore”.