Since Canada, and at the very latest since Spain, Mercedes has regained its footing in Formula 1. They want to put the crisis behind them and their demands are growing. P4 for George Russell and P6 for Lewis Hamilton – on the first weekends of the 2024 Formula 1 season, that would have been a good qualifying result for the racing team from Brackley. But team boss Toto Wolff described the result from the sprint qualification for the Austrian GP today on the microphone at ServusTV as a “sobering result”. What had Mercedes expected?
Bitter surprise for Mercedes in sprint qualifying: Where were the decisive tenths missing?
“We thought we could compete at the front. It doesn’t bother me that much that we’re just a tiny bit behind Piastri. But three and a half tenths behind Max is more than we thought,” Wolff told ServusTV. With his time of 1:05.054, Russell was actually less than a tenth behind Oscar Piastri in third place, and Hamilton, with his 1:05.270 lap, was only one and a half tenths behind Carlos Sainz in fifth place.
Russell was equally surprised about the big gap to Max Verstappen after the sprint qualifying. The Mercedes driver said that the soft tyre felt very good and his lap was strong. Nevertheless, he can identify one point where the last bit of power may have been lost: “I probably overdid it on my out lap. That may have taken a little of the tyre’s maximum grip away.”
Frustration and mistakes from Lewis Hamilton: Terrible lap!
His teammate Hamilton is more pessimistic about the sprint qualifying. “I wasn’t happy with any of my laps. Sprint qualifying was a pretty chaotic session overall,” he summed up. He was already worried about whether he would be able to continue in SQ1. The time he had set right at the beginning was cancelled due to a track limit violation in turn 6. Hamilton himself was not enthusiastic about this lap anyway. He told his race engineer over the radio: “Terrible lap!” So Hamilton had to improve on his second attempt to qualify for SQ2.
Another small mistake proved fatal for the seven-time world champion in SQ3. Hamilton didn’t get the best possible turn 3 after the long uphill drive and went wide at the corner exit. This point alone cost him 0.16 seconds on his teammate, so without this slip-up he would probably have qualified ahead of Sainz and his lap time would have been on par with Russell’s.
According to Hamilton’s analysis, however, pole position was not achievable with or without mistakes: “I don’t think we had the pace to attack pole position for the sprint. But we probably had more speed than we showed.” Wolff immediately identified the problem areas of the Mercedes W15: the high-speed area and the last three corners at the back – there is a 10 km/h difference to the top.
Mercedes has no chance at the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Austria?
Despite knowing where the problems lie and the prospect of improving them over the weekend, the Mercedes team boss Red Bull clearly ahead at their home race: “Here in Austria is their favorite track. The car was always fast here. I don’t think we have much of a chance,” he told ServusTV. But things are different against McLaren and Ferrari: “They’re so close together that you can quickly swing between P2 and P6,” the Austrian said, describing his team’s position in the balance of power.
Andrew Shovlin, Technical Director at Mercedes, added further points that were responsible for the fact that everything did not come together on Russell and Hamilton’s laps. In SQ3, all ten cars had waited in the garage until the last minute to have the best possible track conditions. As a result, Charles Leclerc even missed crossing the finish line in time and was not even able to set a lap time. Mercedes finally took pity on them. They were the first to go out on the track.
“It was important not to risk missing the flag, but that made it difficult to take advantage of the track development,” said Shovlin. “We had hoped to do a little better, but our performance on the soft compound was not strong enough,” he continued. Hamilton also sustained damage to the underbody, while Russell felt he had too little grip at high speeds. So there were several factors that led Mercedes to be dissatisfied with the sprint qualifying, and after the first day of the Formula 1 weekend in Austria, there is room for improvement on some fronts.
However, they were satisfied with the long-run work in the only free practice session of the weekend. Shovlin noted: “On the hard tyre, we looked similar to Barcelona in terms of competitiveness.” Despite solid long runs, Wolff believes the order for the sprint on Saturday is largely cemented. The main focus must therefore be on qualifying and, above all, on the race on Sunday – Russell, Hamilton and Wolff agree on this.
The dominant topic on Thursday was once again the transfer market for the 2025 season. Lewis Hamilton, with his move to Ferrari, which was announced at the beginning of the year, is not entirely uninvolved in getting so much rolling. Christian reveals the current situation with Carlos Sainz, Daniel Ricciardo and Pierre Gasly in this video: