Toto Wolff says 2019 was a season of three distinct parts for Mercedes as it charged to a sixth straight set of Formula 1 world champio💎nships, br💝eaking Ferrari’s record.

Mercedes appeared to enter the season as underdogs after Ferrari’s impressive showing in pre-sea🔴son testing, only to turn the tables 🐭around with one-two finishes in the first five races.

Mercedes won 10 of the opening 12 races of the year, only to 🐓then go on a three-race drou꧟ght following the summer break.

But both titles were sewn up early as a late 🐷return to form saw the team win five of 🧸the final six rounds, with Lewis Hamilton clinching the drivers' title at the Mexican Grand Prix.

Recapping Mercede✃s’ season, team principal Wolff said it could be broken down into three parts – albeit all overshadowed by the death of non-executive director Niki Lauda.

“The overwhelming thing in the season was obviously Niki passing. That is kind of a shadow over🅺 theꦗ whole season,” Wolff said.

“But fromꦗ a performance standpoint, I would put it into three parts. The first one, we really did well in the beginning. We were really competitive.

“Then after the summer, not, and thenꦇ we kind of recovered and didn’t drop the ball, and our c🍷ompetition did. This made us win the championship.”

The closing stages of the year saw b꧒oth Red Bull and Ferrari emerge as a more regular threat to Mercedes, leaving Wolff under no illusions of the challenge the team would face in 20🎶20.

Asꩲked if Red Bull wou♎ld be a credible threat, Wolff replied: “Definitely.

“You can see how fast they are now, and ไhow much Honda has improved, they’re on the level, and Ferrari anyway.

“So onto the next one.”