© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes suffered an obvious performance drop at the Austrian Grand Prix, and it’s not really clear why. Here’s what Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Toto Wolff and Andrew Shovlin are saying so far.
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished the Austrian Grand Prix in P7 and P8 respectively, and it was obvious Mercedes’ car was not performing as well as it did in Spain and Canada.
While the team is still puzzled by what cause the performance drop, here is what they’re saying so far.
Lewis Hamilton:
“We weren’t expecting to be as slow as we were and our performance this weekend was a surprise. We don’t have the answer as to why just yet, but this track has highlighted several areas of improvement we need to focus on.”
“We knew we didn’t have a strong rear-end this weekend, so we took out a lot of front-wing to maintain the balance.
“I was really struggling into certain corners, particularly Turn 10, and sliding, which I couldn’t do anything about it. That is why I was struggling with track limits.
“We added some front-wing at both stops and the car began to come back to us, but it was still a challenge.”
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George Russell:
“I’m sure we will get to the bottom of it, but we still have the same car from two races ago in Barcelona when we were flying so the only thing that is different is the tyres, something we need to understand.
“A few surprises out there, Lando and McLaren did a really great job so well done to them. We need to understand what went wrong on our side.
“It definitely doesn’t feel how we want it to, the car is moving around a lot, a little bit worse than all of the other circuits but the pace was substantially worse than we were expecting. We need to get to the bottom of it.
“[Silverstone upgrades] are another step in the right direction it’s just another step. It’s clearly circuit dependent because we were nowhere here and with the same car we were good in Canada and fast in Barcelona.
“That bodes well for Silverstone because Silverstone is more in line with Barcelona than it is this circuit.”
Toto Wolff:
“It’s been a tough weekend overall and both drivers have struggled with the car since FP1. From Friday onwards, we have seen that we were lacking a couple of tenths and we couldn’t make the car quicker.
“Once the tyres start sliding, either under braking or through the corner, then you have no grip. That contributed to our lack of performance, but we will have to go away and analyse it in more detail. We will take this weekend on the chin and move forward.
“The swings are quite interesting from circuit to circuit where sometimes we are the closest challengers to Red Bull, and at others struggling.
“We have a step of performance that we are bringing to Silverstone. Let’s see if that circuit suits the characteristics of the car a little more and we will analyse from there.”
Andrew Shovlin:
“The performance clearly hasn’t been good enough; we need to understand how much is down to not landing the set-up in the right place and how much is just base performance.
“We’ve not brought any updates to the last few races, so it’s also possible we’re lacking development.
“We’ve got plans in place to address that but the gap to Ferrari was certainly a worry today.
“We need to work hard to understand the areas that need improvement, but we’re looking forward to Silverstone and putting this race behind us.”
