Mercedes has been compelled to halt development of its current Formula 1 car due to a recent series of costly crashes.
The German team has faced several expensive incidents since summer, including Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s practice crash at Monza and George Russell’s mishaps during Austin qualifying and Mexico practice.
With the repair costs mounting, particularly after Russell’s chassis damage last weekend, Mercedes says cost cap constraints have left no room in the budget for further upgrades.
Commenting on the situation, Wolff explained: “In the cost cap space, it is a tricky situation.
“These three shunts put us on the back foot, and certainly the one that happened [on Friday in Mexico] was massive. We had to opt for a completely new chassis and that is a tremendous hit in the cost cap.
“We probably have to dial down on what we put on the car. So we’ll be having two upgrade packages in Brazil, two floors, but that’s basically it. There’s nothing else that’s going to come.
“We have certain limitation on parts where we need to be creative how we’re managing them. And certainly there is an impact on how many development parts we can put on the car, because the answer is zero.”
Despite concerns over the cost cap, and the potential for greater issues if more crashes occur, Wolff said there was no thought of stopping Lewis Hamilton and Russell from racing hard against each other in Mexico.
“They are so good and so experienced that we allow the racing,” he explained. “There was not a feeling where I thought it’s getting a bit hairy.
“I think we made the call to George at the end, where it was clear that Lewis was the faster car, to maybe [tell him] that one defence on the straight was a bit of a late move. But I don’t have any doubts in the two.”
While Mercedes will have two new floors available in Brazil, with Russell’s repaired Austin version now ready, Wolff believes the team may still split the packages between its cars.
When asked about the plan, Wolff said: “I’m always open-minded about what the drivers think.
“If I’m certain that George is going to go for the new, Lewis may want to back-to-back the old floor now in Brazil. We will certainly talk with him and see what his preference is.”
Hamilton potentially returning to the old version comes as Mercedes continues to question whether the new package may have introduced some aero imbalance that could be causing these incidents.
Wolff elaborated: “There may be something in the aero update package that causes something that we don’t understand because we had two massive crashes in the same corner in Austin. But then we had a crash on the old car too.
“These cars are so on the knife’s edge that it will be an interesting experiment in Brazil, to see whether there is a high-speed instability or a low-speed factor. I don’t think we can just extrapolate that one is better than the other.”