Bad Zandvoort race is a contrast to past rounds, claims Toto Wolff
After a surprisingly tough weekend for Mercedes, team boss Toto Wolff has revealed that the Brackley-based outfit might have taken some bad decisions when defining the setup in practice sessions.
On the back of a string of strong races, Mercedes endured very different fortunes at last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, having been unable to join the contest for top places,
The German-British outfit won three of four races before the summer break, and looked strong in the practice session at Zandvoort as well. However, Lewis Hamilton was knocked out in Q2 while George Russell ended up only fourth, six tenths of a second behind pole-sitter Lando Norris.
In the 72-lap race, Hamilton managed to fight his way up the order to finish P8, but his team-mate was unable to keep himself in the fight for a podium place as Mercedes looked slower than Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has indicated that bad setup decisions have led to a unexpecredly dismal results in the Netherlands.
"We had a bad race today. It was quite a contrast to the previous Grand Prix in Spa where we had set the pace and finished first and second on track. We clearly got some decisions wrong in terms of how we were running the car here.
“We will evaluate that quickly so we can avoid another race like this. It is bruising. Sometimes it is good to be bruised though to take a step forward.
"With George, we switched to a two-stop strategy as he was running out of tyre in his second stint. That higher degradation was likely in part due to some set-up decisions we took.
“We will need to do a full analysis to understand how much of it was down to that or other factors. With Lewis, we planned a two-stop race for him, although we were evaluating the one-stop midway through. However, he suffered a lock up on the Hard tyre and, with no risk behind, we switched him onto the two-stop strategy.
“His pace was good throughout though and that gives us encouragement. There is clearly lots of learning we can take from this weekend and hopefully we can bounce back next weekend in Monza,” concluded Wolff.
Speaking of the Dutch Grand Prix, Mercedes‘ trackside engineering director Andew Shovlin stated that lack of rear grip has been the key factor for Mercedes’ struggles.
"Overall, it has been a poor weekend. We will go away and pick through the data to understand why we were off the pace both in qualifying and race trim.
“Today we were lacking the speed to fight for much more than we achieved. We were not generating good grip and, consequently, were sliding around on the tyre.
“That led to higher degradation than our competitors and forced us into a two-stop race. We were on the back foot today, but we will be working hard to ensure that isn't the case next weekend in Monza."
