Austrian GP : Post-Race comments from Lewis, Bottas and Toto Wolff

Another race at Red Bull Ring another disappointment for Mercedes, their winless streak goes to five races in the 2021 season and their largest in the turbo hybrid era.

On the positive side, Valtteri Bottas finished race in P2, his best position of 2021 season so far. The Fin sustained pressure from Lando Norris and rocket McLaren in the final stages of Grand Prix to clinch podium.

Lewis Hamilton was in contention for P2 before damaging his car at the exit of Turn 10. He run over kerbs and derailed his chances of finishing on the podium.

With P4 finish, Lewis scored 12 points for the weekend and 150 points for the season. His deficit to Max Verstappen(182 points) increased to 32 points in drivers championship battle.

Bottas scores 18 points for the weekend with P2 finish and 92 points in total for the season. The Fin currently sits in P5 in the championship standings.

Mercedes holds onto P2 in the Constructors championship battle with 242 point, 44 points shy of leaders, Red Bull.

The Regaining champions needs to halt their slide at their home grand prix in two weeks time.

Lewis Hamilton (P4)

“It’s not the result I wanted but it’s still some decent points. I sustained some damage just before I overtook Lando – the rear of the car started to feel strange and it just got worse throughout the race. Otherwise it would have been a straightforward second place for me. Max is clear out front at the moment so we need improve our car and start performing better each weekend. The team are working incredibly hard and we need continue that so we can find performance.”

Valtteri Bottas (P2)

“For me personally, P2 one place better than last week and I started from fifth so not a bad afternoon. I think as a team we got some decent points considering the gap we have to Red Bull in terms of pure pace.

For me it’s nice to be on the podium again in second place and I think we really maximised what we could get today. The tyres held on pretty well today which was a surprise. Next two weeks of hardwork and learning then Silverstone, it will be great to see the fans there and I hope we can pick up our pace to give it a real fight there.”

Toto Wolff, CEO & Team Principal

“I think the result probably looks worse in terms of pace than the reality. We were stuck behind the McLaren which cost us a lot of time, otherwise our pace was good, maybe not enough to win the race but right up there at the front which is a step forward.

Lewis picked up some damage at turn 10 – I don’t think he was running particularly hard over the kerb, it was just a piece that fell away so we need to understand what happened. Overall, not a bad damage limitation weekend.

Morale in the team is good, we could see the improvement in race pace was from last weekend so we are making progress and eventually we will be competing for the win again. We are one DNF away from being right there in the Constructors’ and Drivers’ Championships so this is far from over.”

Andrew Shovlin

“A solid day for Valtteri starting fifth and finishing second but a disappointing one for Lewis after he lost a lot of downforce with some bodywork damage before the stop. Our task today was made harder by our poor qualifying but second and third was realistically our best result and around half distance it looked like we were on track to achieve that.

Lando’s five second penalty gave Valtteri a good opportunity to pass in the pits so we decided to follow him in. Lewis took a lot out of his tyres trying to pass in the first stint but once he’d got through on lap 20, Max was too far up the road for us to mount a challenge so we were just looking for any opportunities with safety cars. 

It looks like the bodywork damage for Lewis was at the end of lap 29 just before we came in. The downforce loss was around six or seven tenths but as it was all from the rear, the balance become difficult and we were damaging the rears with sliding. That dropped Lewis from second to fourth but at least we had Valtteri up there to pick up the position.

We know we’ve not been strong enough at this track over a range of conditions so we need to go away and work hard to understand that. For the British Grand Prix we’ll bring an update package and it’s also a track that has suited our car in recent years. We really missed the fans in 2020 but we’ll be working hard over the next few days to recover our form and hopefully can give them something to cheer about on race day.”