Wolff: McLaren was out of reach, but cooler Spa should help Mercedes

Following a tough weekend in Budapest, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff insists that the cooler conditions that are expected to feature this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix should highlight the strengths of the Brackley-based outfit's W15.

Having won two consecutive races in Austria and Great Britain, Mercedes endured some setbacks at the Hungarian Grand Prix. George Russell failed to set a competitive time in challenging conditions in the opening qualifying segment, thus securing only P17 on the grid.

The Briton managed to work his way up to P8 in the race thanks to an aggressive offset strategy, but it was still disappointing given the pace he had showed earlier on the weekend.

His team-mate Lewis Hamilton did not encounter any misfortunes at the Hungaroring, but he complained about the balance of his W15. The Briton qualified only fifth on Saturday, and was unable to challenge the two McLarens for the win.

Commenting on the Mogyoród race, Wolff said: "Claiming a podium finish, our fifth race in a row doing so, feels good. The McLarens were very strong today and out of reach for us in these hot conditions.

"Congratulations to them and Oscar; they deserved today’s victory. We were able to maximise the result with Lewis though and that is encouraging. To see Lewis get his 200th podium in F1, and his 151st with our team, was great.

"Yesterday’s setback with George meant he had to fight through the field. In the end, it was a good recovery from where he started. It was a challenging race for him with plenty of traffic in his pit window throughout much of the afternoon.

"Without that, he may have been able to claim one more position, but it was still a solid effort. We now head to Spa where the conditions will likely be cooler and hopefully that will suit us a little more," concluded Wolff.

Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin echoed Wolff's words, claiming that McLaren are settig a very high standard at the moment.

"Firstly, well done to McLaren and Oscar. A 1-2 finish is a very difficult result to achieve, and they are setting a very high bar at the moment.

"It was great to see Lewis on the podium today. Going from P5 to P3 was a good achievement considering we had to get ahead of Verstappen to achieve that. We were able to maximise the result with him today as, without incidents, we simply didn't have the pace to race McLaren.

"With George we qualified well out of position yesterday. That denied him the chance to race for much more than the minor points positions. He made a good recovery, coming close to chasing down the Red Bull of Perez, but we'll make sure we take the learnings from yesterday and perform better in future.

The Briton hopes that the cooler conditions that are expected to feature the Belgian Grand Prix weekend will play to the strengths of the W15 which excelled in the much cooler race of Silverstone.

"We now look ahead to Spa. We've still got work to do to be right at the front every weekend, but we're moving in the right direction. The energy and enthusiasm in the team is palpable. We've got a few days to regroup and prepare; it will be interesting to see how the W15 responds to cooler conditions than we experienced here in Hungary this weekend."