Mercedes trio expand on low-key performance in F1 Dutch GP after big races prior to that, as they await analysis to understand more.
Having had a solid run before the summer break, Mercedes hit a roadblock in F1 Dutch GP where they ended up only seventh and eighth. In fact, Lewis Hamilton did not enjoy qualifying wither after getting knocked out in Q2.
He laid it down to lack of practice after changing his set-up from Friday to Saturday. For the race, he did not expect as much but ended up performing well. Even with the grid penalty, Hamilton ended up eighth after the two-stop strategy which was pre-planned.
There was a thought of going for one-stop, but it just wasn’t possible in the end. His teammate George Russell dropped like a stone as he noted. Having made up a place at the start to run third, he was caught and passed by Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc.
He even fell into the clutches of Carlos Sainz, but a second stop readily killed his chances of any Top 5 finish, which his teammate Hamilton thought he could have, had he started in the Top 5. Russell was baffled by the loss of pace and high degradation.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff wants to analyse things before drawing any conclusion if it was the new floor or just lack of practice time to balance things out. What he can understand is that they can’t simply drop in performance from one race to another.
Race –
Hamilton: “I had a lot of fun today. We planned to do a two-stop, started on the soft – the soft tyre was a very good tyre, it felt much better than the medium tyre in practice. The hard tyre was pretty decent, it was difficult to see what I needed to do. I was on a two-stopper, so I was trying to use up the tyre but I also wasn’t sure whether or not we might possibly go for a one [stop]. I had a bit of lock-up, which pushed me to stay on my strategy. Probably if I got on to the one-stop and managed a little bit better, then I could have done a one-stop and maybe finished one spot ahead. I didn’t really have struggle with the tyres, I did have degradation but it wasn’t that bad for us. On my side, it wasn’t that bad, as I said.”
Russell: “I probably would have finished maybe one or maximum two positions higher if not for the second stop. We just had no pace. I was just dropping like a stone – especially quite surprised versus Ferrari. We were expecting to be comfortably ahead of them, and Charles was quicker, Carlos was catching me. Clearly, we got something wrong with the tyres.”
Wolff: “Yeah, I think these cars are sometimes a surprise box. And we had six podiums in a row, and that doesn’t look like the car that three weeks ago was first and second, at least first on merit. And you can’t really end up with a result like this without any major factor playing. And that’s something we need to analyse in the next few days until Monza. Was it because we put something on the car that didn’t help? Did we engineer something into the car that wasn’t good? And how do you justify these swings of performance that sometimes look really good this weekend and then obviously today that was, in terms of degradation, not very impressive.”
Set-up, finishing position –
Hamilton: “Yes, definitely, if I just qualified like I should have qualified. If I didn’t have the problem in qualifying then yes. I think I had the pace today to be in the top five – if I started fourth for example I would’ve finished at least fourth. I didn’t say it [set-up] was very good. In qualifying, we made a big set-up change going into FP3 but it was wet, so didn’t get to test it. Going into qualifying, it was very evident how it was and then in the race, I took out a bunch of wing to balance it and it was fine.”
Russell: “After the first couple of laps I thought we were on course for a podium here, I knew the overtaking was going to be difficult. I was really shocked at how fast McLaren was. Lando just looked so comfortable out there, super impressive to see, but we’ve had six really strong races and then suddenly we’ve finished almost a minute behind the win, so you don’t lose all of that performance overnight. We qualified fourth and clearly didn’t get something right [in the race]. Honestly, right now I’m still scratching my head. It was very tough conditions, this wind with the long corners. Right now I don’t have the answers.”
Wolff: “I think it was two factors. Back-to-back, the update kit on Friday, which at the end left us with not a lot of data. The update kit that we put onto the car, the Spa update on Friday, and then took off again. And then obviously with the lack of running, like everybody else, maybe we didn’t decide the right things for the car. So there could be a few factors at play that contributed to this non-performance. I don’t want to jump into conclusions too quickly because we’re going to look at it in the coming days and hopefully trying to find clues in the data.
“Like I said before, was it a set-up? Was it a track? What is it that we got wrong? Was it the floor that we put on the car? Was it all of this together? So hopefully we can sort it out until Monza and be competitive again. But the swing in performance between P1, P2 and P7, P8, there’s a piggy in there. It’s not something that was a simple set-up decision, in my opinion. In terms of strategy, I don’t think that we had lots of choices. Our degradation was really bad and we could have hung out there with a tyre that was going down and ended up P7, P8 or just tried a two-stopper and maybe catch Perez or Sainz which we didn’t at the end. So whatever we’ve done, it didn’t really work because of the car not being in a good place.”
Here’s how F1 Dutch GP panned out
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