After struggling on Friday over a second off ♍Sebastian Vettel's pace, Mercedes' race pace was no reassurance to team boss Toto Wolff despite seeing his team increase its lead in the Formula 1 world championship.

Despite Lewis Hamilton claiming second place at 👍the Sepang International Circuit, increasing his title lead over Vettel to 34 points, Valtteri Bottas was overtaken by the Ferrari driver on a charge from the back of the grid and ended 36 seconds behind his team-mඣate.

Wolff said the relative pace to the Red Bulls, in particular, was a major deficit and something which has flagged up conce⭕rns attacking the final five races of the year.

"If Max would have pushed to the end we wou🥃ld have been half a minute down,” Wolff said. "How can a car that is so fast on so many circuits, lose so much wi🐭th a tyre that is overheating?

“If you look at the real pace today then it would haveಞ been P5. And that is worrisome - let's see what happens in Suzuka, we've got a couple of days of trying to understand, to put this completely different plan out."

Asked if the team could be optimistic about recovering pace in Suzuka, he said, "On paper, that should b🍃e tܫhe case."

However, the focus for the team is to analyseꦡ what went wrong in Malaysia, where🏅 Mercedes were substantially off the pace in both wet and the dry running.

"I'm just very down, I must say because you cannot just say 'well we've scored more points than Ferrari' - we've lost so much pace this 🔴weekend."