Lewis Hamilton thought his car was ‘surprisingly bad’

After the major change of the Mercedes W14 in Monaco (which finally saw the addition of conventional sidepods) things seemed to be going a lot better. However, the joy at Mercedes was short-lived. In Austria, the team’s pace was not where it had hoped all weekend and the GP ended in a struggle for both drivers. Especially Lewis Hamilton, who was eventually classified eighth due to crossing track boundaries, had a hard time, as he showed during the race. Afterwards, the Briton was clear: “I certainly didn’t expect us to be this bad,” quoted Motorsport. “I don’t really know why, it’s really surprising, although the car felt very much the same as all of last year.”

So, despite the upgrades, is Mercedes back to square one? It is still much too early to say that, it could of course also be due to the type of circuit that the W14 was not comfortable with. In any case, there was something to improve on the set-up, so that it went a little better after the pit stops. “During the stops we screwed up the wing a bit and then the car stayed on the track a bit better afterwards.” Now it is important to find out why it was still problematic in the base, because according to Hamilton it is clear that things did not go as the races before. “The previous two races were much, much better.”