According to Toto Wolff, Mercedes would not have won much in the Austrian Grand Prix if it had not been stuck behind Lando Norris McLaren. The stable team boss feels they have made progress since the Styria Grand Prix.
Mercedes’ weakness continued to rise against Red Bull in the Austrian Grand Prix, and is now 32 points in the singles and 44 points in the constructors’ points race. Fourth-placed Lewis Hamilton said he would easily have put the car in second if there had been no injury to the Mercedes W12, and Valtteri Bottas said second place was the limit for him. Meanwhile, Toto Wolff tried to take a look at the positives and highlight that they actually performed better than their results show.
“I said before the race that it would be very difficult to beat Max, but it’s clearly frustrating to lose a lot of clamping power in the back of the car and not hold second place, so we lost a lot of points today,” the runner-up said after changing the wheel, eventually Injury due to the loss of two positions Hamilton. “I would have been the second, because I was standing in this place when the problem suddenly occurred.” Second place could have been easy, but we obviously weren’t able to catch the Red Bull guys.”
Hamilton couldn’t tell where he could have picked up the injury, claiming he hasn’t ridden a wheelbarrow better than anyone else, while Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff revealed that
At exit bend 10, on all-wheel drive, he detached a piece from the seven-time world champion Mercedes.
“We looked at the load metrics and it was the same as the lap before, so we need to figure out why it happened.”
Wolff said the weekend was all about the rescue, but they weren’t as bad as they might end up being. “The result looks worse than our pace actually was. We are stuck behind McLaren.
Maybe our pace could have been there, maybe not enough to win the race, but it was right there next to Red Bull, and it’s a step forward.”
Mercedes is hoping to make progress in the next race with a few small improvements. Hamilton says they are now miles away from Red Bull and if they don’t improve, they won’t be world champions. “There is a lot of work ahead of us, we need everyone, but I know everyone is already working on it. Red Bull has made a number of improvements over the past few races, while we haven’t had any of them. So we also need improvements to find as much as possible. performance, otherwise the result will often be what it is today.”
During his judging, Wolff praised Bottas, who had a good pace in the competition. The Finn driver was also happy with the second place. “Overall, my whole race was strong. In the first stage, as soon as I figured this was likely to stand out, I tried to protect the tires and think long-term. I think starting from fifth, second place was the maximum today, and at least we scored A few points in the fight with Red Bull. Obviously Max was out of range, but other than that it was a good race.”
For the sequel, Bottas is also confident about developments at Silverstone. “Obviously they were faster on that track, there’s no doubt about that. As a team, we did some damage salvage and didn’t drop a lot of points. We had to do it now, and in the meantime we’re looking at the whole picture, We need to improve the car and accelerate in the straight lines, the car needs to be more aerodynamically efficient. There will be some new elements in the car at Silverstone which we hope will be a step forward and we can fight against it.”
