Hamilton: We didn’t expect to be this slow

Mercedes drivers finished in 7th and 8th place and after the Austrian Grand Prix complained about the W14’s lack of speed and unstable behavior on track, believing the problems were related to the idiosyncrasies of its configuration.

Lewis Hamilton (7th): “There are no problems with the car, in itself it was fine, but it just lacked speed. But McLaren was exceptionally fast today, did a great job and Lando performed very well. I didn’t expect them to be this fast, but we also didn’t expect them to be this slow.

It’s just that some of our weaknesses have come to the fore on this track and we need to do our best to eliminate them. All in all it was not the best day. But the way the car behaved didn’t come as a surprise to me.”

George Russell (8th): “We have the same car that we drove in two races in Barcelona where we were capable of great speeds and the only difference is the tires we used this weekend. In general, we need to find out what the lack of speed is related to, but I’m sure we’ll work it out.

There were a few surprises along the way, Lando Norris in particular was very fast behind the wheel of the McLaren, so it must be admitted that this team performed very well. It is all the more important to understand why we are not doing well.

The car behaves very unstable and the steering feel is definitely worse than I wanted – a little worse than on other tracks. At the same time, the pace was much slower than we expected.

But we are preparing some technical innovations for Silverstone, and this should be another step in the right direction. The disadvantages of the car manifest themselves differently on different circuits: if everything was bad for us in Austria, then with the same car we performed very well in Canada and in Barcelona.

In theory, this is reassuring for the race at Silverstone, because the British circuit is more like Barcelona than the Red Bull Ring.

Andrew SchovlinChief Race Engineer: “Of course our results are not good enough, and we need to understand how much this is due to not being able to find the optimal settings, and how much to the lack of efficiency of the chassis as a whole .

We have not brought any new products in recent races, so it cannot be ruled out that we are simply behind in terms of modernization. We already have plans to speed them up, but Ferrari’s increased backlog naturally worried us.

The situation with track overruns was difficult, and we got late notifications about this, so Lewis was fined before we had time to act.

However, we are happy to get back to work on the track in a few days. We will try to leave today’s race in the past, although we must do everything we can to understand which areas need improvement, and we will prepare for the Silverstone stage.