Whats Happening to Mercedes this Season - Wolff Stumped by Mercedes totally off weekend in Zandvoort

After an unexpectedly challenging weekend for Mercedes, team manager Toto Wolff has disclosed that the Brackley-based team may have made some poor choices in defining the configuration during practice sessions.

Mercedes Performance

Mercedes had somewhat different luck in the Dutch Grand Prix last weekend after a run of good races. Not only was it unable to compete for the first position.

Prior to the summer break, the German-British team won three of the four races and shown good performance in the Zandvoort practice session. But George Russell finished only fourth, six-tenths of a second behind pole-sitter Lando Norris, while Lewis Hamilton was eliminated in the second round.

Lewis Hamilton

While Hamilton fought his way up the order to finish eighth in the 72-lap race, his teammate was unable to maintain a podium position as Mercedes appeared slower than Red Bull, McLaren, and Ferrari.

Toto Wolff Remarks

Toto Wolff, the manager of the Mercedes team, has said that poor setup choices have produced disappointing outcomes in the Netherlands.

Dutch Grand Prix

The race was not good. Compared to the last Grand Prix in Spa, when we had set the pace and finished first and second on the circuit, it was completely the opposite. We made poor judgments on how to operate the vehicle in this situation.
We will assess that right away to prevent another race like that. It is bruised. However, sometimes it is wonderful to be bruised to move forward. With George, we went to a two-stop approach since during his second shift, his tires were becoming low. We made some setup decisions, which most certainly contributed to the increased deterioration.

To determine how much of it was due to that or other causes, a thorough examination will be required. Although we were assessing the one-stop halfway through, we had Lewis scheduled for a two-stop race. He had a lock-up on the hard tire, though, so we moved him to the two-stop approach as there was no danger involved.
However, we are encouraged by the fact that he maintained a decent pace throughout. We can definitely learn a lot from this past weekend, and maybe we can improve next weekend in Monza, Wolff said.

Andew Shovlin Remarks

Speaking about the Dutch Grand Prix, Andew Shovlin, Mercedes trackside engineering director, said that the companys problems have primarily been caused by a lack of rear grip.

It is been a bad weekend all around. We will take a break and examine the statistics to figure out why we lagged behind in both qualifying and the race.

We did not have the speed today to battle for a lot more than we did. We were slipping on the tire as a result of our poor grip production.

We were compelled to run a two-stop race as a result, suffering worse deterioration than our rivals. We had a disadvantage today, but we will work hard to make sure it does not happen in Monza next weekend.