Max Verstappen controlled the race at Zandvoort on Sunday to win the race for Red Bull and to get back to the top of the drivers’ standings ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
Despite their best efforts to overcome the undercut, Hamilton and Mercedes were unable to react to Verstappen’s pace in the race and pitted twice early to take the lead.
PLUS: The Mercedes tactic that Verstappen had to overcome to win at home
Second place nevertheless marked a decent turnaround for Hamilton, who had lost most of his run on Friday after a long red flag in FP1 followed by a drive problem in FP2 that restricted Hamilton to just one timed lap.
Mercedes track engineer Andrew Shovlin said after the race that the team had fallen by the wayside because of the setbacks against Red Bull.
“Even qualifying because we made it through the medium [in Q1] and then we were on cold tires because of a red flag in Q2, it was pretty late before we actually had a run with hot tires out of the pits that were fresh, “said Shovlin.
“So we just caught up a little. It was encouraging to see that we are close [in qualifying]. I know Max didn’t have a perfect lap.
“But this weekend we were a bit behind the curve trying to catch up and we have to do everything right to beat them.”
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes W12 and Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
Mercedes had particular difficulties through the complex of Curves 2 and 3, whereby the elevated curve 3 presented a new challenge for the teams and drivers.
Shovlin announced that Mercedes had found a different balance for its W12 car at Zandvoort than it had expected from its simulator work to prepare for the weekend.
“The banked turns are very unusual and the sequence of Turn 2-3 is certainly pretty tricky,” said Shovlin.
“There may be very specific elements to our car that make it difficult. But even if you do the simulator work, if you know a track, you know how to set up the simulator so that it emulates it very effectively.
“The balance we had on the simulator was very different from the one we had when we came here on Friday and put the car into operation. And that’s why we had to move it a little more during setup than we normally do.
“I think with a little more knowledge it will be easier next year, but some of it was just getting to a new track than we’d like.”
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Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff said he expected the performance advantage to vary from track to track but that it would have to execute its processes perfectly to beat Red Bull.
“We just have to be in our A-game the whole time,” said Wolff.
“And with those little mistakes, with the inability to properly finish FP2 as a starting point, and then in running the race itself we just have to be … it takes the A game to win the A championship.”
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