Max Verstappen clinched Red Bull’s fourth win in a row in Austria, while Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas had to settle for second and third places respectively.
Verstappen led every single lap and rarely looked at the front of the field. Hamilton said after the race that it was “impossible” to keep up. He had dropped more than 17 seconds before being 35.7 seconds ahead of the fastest lap after a late pit stop.
Mercedes only has four days off before hitting the track again at the Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, but it has already identified a key area that could explain its problems.
Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin announced after the race that Mercedes had been pursuing a fairly radical setup for the Styria weekend that may have contributed to its being unable to keep up with Verstappen on race day.
“We went in a pretty crazy direction with the setup, a radical approach that I think was maybe a little better on a single lap,” said Shovlin.
“The question that remains is whether we have violated our humiliation, and that is what we’ll have to look at in the next day or two.
“I don’t really want to go into detail. In essence, the window we are working in was much, much wider. We kind of went further than we ever went and really understood the ramifications of that.
“Lewis did a lot of driving in the driver-in-loop simulator before he came here, and it looked like an interesting direction.
“But an important part of this year for us is adapting well to each track. For that we have to be a little brave and original when it comes to the setup direction. “
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Hamilton said after the race that Mercedes would need to find more power and upgrade its car if it wanted to fight Red Bull, only for team principal Toto Wolff to reveal that development at the W12 had been halted.
Hamilton is now 18 points behind Verstappen at the top of the drivers’ standings ahead of this weekend’s race.
Shovlin felt that if Mercedes were to move in the direction of the setup, it would give Mercedes a chance to strike back against Red Bull in hopes that this could help solve some of both drivers’ tire breakdown problems.
“A big area is understanding this set-up deviation we made and whether or not it has made life difficult for the rear tires in the long run,” said Shovlin.
“We can do some of them simply with data. But we’ll see if that’s a job that can be carried into the Friday of the race weekend.
“But basically the car is very similar. There are additional challenges in getting the grip out of this C5 compound, the very softest rubber, in a single lap. This can be a challenge when it’s very hot here.
“The other thing is that we’re not looking for massive margins. I think we were in the race by a few tenths behind and there was a little bit of deterioration. But the solution to both problems could be the same.” .
“We’re just going to try to run the rear wheels a little cooler and take care of the rubber a little better, and you’ll find that both of these things come our way.
“So we’re going to focus on those areas and it’ll just be about seeing if we can come back a little stronger in a few days.”
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