George Russell perplexed after the Dutch Grand Prix

The summer break did not do good to all the teams. Mercedes, a team in good shape before the break with three wins in the last four rounds, arrived this weekend in the Netherlands full of confidence, aware of having found a performing car. However, the weekend did not really unfold as the team had hoped.

Disappointing qualifications

Hopes were high after good performances in the practices, with Norris stating that Mercedes seemed a step ahead, with Russell leading in the second free practice session. However, in qualifying, the balance of the Mercedes was totally different, forcing Russell to use a new set of soft tires at the end of Q1 to avoid getting eliminated. In Q2, this trend continued, with Hamilton unable to place his W15 in the top third of the session and ending the session in twelfth position, before receiving a three-place grid penalty for impeding Sergio Perez.

In Q3, Russell could not do better than a fourth place, behind the untouchable McLaren and Verstappen. Toto Wolff, head of the team, expressed his frustration after disappointing qualifications: “The car is on a knife edge. It’s really difficult to get it to work properly. When you have a moment of overheating in a corner, it doesn’t recover. I think this made things difficult for both drivers,” the Austrian said.

« You can say that falling in Q2 is really not good, but also, P4 is a underperformance compared to what we were hoping for and what we saw in previous sessions. » While he seemed in good shape this weekend, Russell had a very difficult race, struggling to keep up with the drivers in front of him. The winner of the Austrian Grand Prix this year says he is surprised by his performance and that of the other teams, not understanding the difficulties faced by Mercedes this weekend after six very solid races.

A lack of pace during the race

“We simply didn’t have any pace,” lamented the Briton. “I was dropping like a stone – I was particularly surprised compared to Ferrari. We expected to be comfortably ahead of them, but Charles [Leclerc] was faster, Carlos [Sainz] was catching up to me. Clearly, we made a mistake with the tires.”

« We qualified in fourth position and clearly, we didn’t do something correctly [during the race]. Honestly, at the moment, I’m still scratching my head. The conditions were very difficult, with the wind and the long corners. For now, I don’t have the answers. » The Mercedes driver was also surprised by the pace of the McLarens, with Norris finishing with a lead of over 20 seconds on Verstappen. A performance that the Briton believed he would have this weekend.

« After the first few laps, I thought we were on track for a podium here. I knew overtaking would be difficult. I was truly shocked by McLaren’s speed. Lando [Norris] seemed so comfortable out there, it was really impressive to see, but we had six very strong races and suddenly we finished almost a minute behind the win, so you don’t lose all that performance overnight.

Despite finishing in seventh and eighth place in the race, Mercedes has been outpaced by Ferrari in the battle for third place in the constructors’ championship. Wolff hopes that Zandvoort was just a misstep and that the team will find solutions as early as Monza.

« I do not want to jump to conclusions too quickly, because we will be looking into the issue in the coming days, and we hope to try to find clues in the data. I hope that we can resolve this before Monza and that we can be competitive again.
» The Italian Grand Prix this weekend will undoubtedly bring an element of response and may condition Mercedes’ end of the season.