Azerbaijan GP: Post-race comments from Lewis and Toto Wolff

Seven time World Champions Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 team and Lewis Hamilton had a forgettable weekend during 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The team failed to score a point for the first time in 55-races, it was a 4th longest point scoring streak in Formula 1 history.

After a disappointing weekend on the streets of Monaco, Mercedes hopes of bouncing back to the normalcy dashed by a costly mistake by Lewis Hamilton. The Brit finished the race in P15 and his 54-race point scoring streak also come to an end with one small error – his last failure to score came in Austria 2018.

According to Lewis and Mercedes team, an accidental brake balance setting change caused him to lock brakes on Turn 1 when vying with Perez for the lead following a dramatic race restart with two laps to go.

Lewis’s team mate Valtteri Bottas finished the race in P12 after his W12 struggled for grip all weekend. The Fin, started the race in P10 on the grid but he lost his position to Sebastian Vettel in the opening lap.

As Lewis and his main title rival Max Verstappen both failed to score, there is no change at the top of the drivers championship standings. Max Verstappen (105 points) still leads the Drivers’ Championship by 4 points from Lewis (101) while Valtteri Bottas drops from P4 to P6 with 47 points.

But race winner Sergio Perez dealt big blow to Mercedes in Constructor’s Championship battle by extending Red Bull’s advantage over Mercedes by 25 points. Red Bull (174 points) lead the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team (148 points) by 26 points in the Constructors’ Championship.

Valtteri Bottas (P12)

“Today in the race I was lacking pace, as I have been all weekend and it’s difficult to understand why. One big issue is the tyre warm-up, particularly the front tyres. On the hard tyres, it took almost10 laps to warm up and on the restart, we were on the back foot with cold tyres. I was trying everything I could but something just wasn’t right with the car for me this weekend. We need to work hard to figure out why and move on quickly from this.”

Lewis Hamilton(P15)

“An unfortunate day, a humbling experience and I’m so sorry for the team. We did a good job to be in the position we were in today, to be out of the top ten on Friday and come back was down to the hard work of the men and women in this team. When Checo came towards me after the restart, I turned the wheel and flicked a switch which shifts the brake balance and that caused me to lock up.

It’s one of the toughest moments I’ve had for a while – one moment we had all the points and the next we had none but for sure, we’ll regroup and come back.”

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and Part Owner

“In Monaco and here we didn’t have a car that was competitive, full stop. We have underlying issues – we are not getting the car in a happy window for the tyres. We know the deficit and we know we have gaps which we simply have to overcome but I have no doubt, this a team which is so strong and so angry, and we are going to turn that anger into positive form and come back.”

Andrew Shovlin, Head of Trackside operations

“An extremely disappointing end to the weekend but that’s just how luck pans out sometimes; Max’s misfortune put us in that position in the first place. The bigger issue that we have to deal with is that in the last two races we haven’t been good enough. Not fast enough, we’ve made mistakes, we struggle to switch the tyres on and we’ve been on the back-foot through free practice. 

We know the level it takes to win championships and we’re not at that level right now so we need to re-group and come back performing the way we know that we can. We have the team, the car and the drivers to win this but we need to be tough and honest with ourselves over the next few days. We’ve had days like this before and each time we’ve come back strong and we’ll look do that in France.”