Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has explained how optimising performance and working on weaknesses allowed the F1 team to improve at the Singapore Grand Prix after some below-par performances at the street circuit.

The Silver Arrows have been the dominant force in the sport in the turbo-hybrid era, but, at times, struggled at the glitzy night race held in Marina Bay, Singapore.

Indeed, three wins between 2014 and 2019 have been achieved at the track by the Mercs - a strike-rate perhaps lower than they're used to elsewhere - and Wolff explained how they needed to change the 'status-quo' in South East Asia to ensure improvement was achieved.

He explained when asked about examples of optimising process on the High Performance Podcast: "There are many examples of that, but one that was important was that we never performed well in Singapore. We had really good seasons in 2014 and 2015, but always came to Singapore and we lacked performance.

"It was such an outlier that I said we couldn’t accept the status quo, we need to get on top of this because I believe it will make us faster on the other circuits as well and the group that was involved around the mechanical side of the car really stuck their heads together and we went to Japan the following week and we killed everybody.

"Next year, we were the dominating team in Singapore and the lessons we learned were so valuable for the years to come."

Lewis Hamilton actually won the race in 2014, but Nico Rosberg retired with technical issues, so for the team overall, it was a bittersweet weekend.

In 2015, meanwhile, Ferrari were dominant with Sebastian Vettel taking pole and the victory - though a Mercedes one-two did indeed follow in Japan.

By 2016, though, Mercedes were back on top after Wolff's intervention with pole and the win heading to Rosberg back under the Singapore lights. 

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