Mercedes: "That's something we need to be sharper with in future"

"Well done to Pierre on his first win and Alpha Tauri on an amazing result at their home race!," Shovlin says in a Mercedes retrospective of the Italian Grand Prix. Actually Hamilton should have won the race at Monza, were it not for the fact that the Briton was severely punished by the stewards after making a pit stop while the pit lane was closed. "That's something we need to be sharper with in future, as it clearly made his afternoon hugely challenging."

In the end Hamilton managed to finish in seventh place, just two places behind teammate Bottas. "Valtteri had a difficult afternoon, he'd lost places off the start and initially thought he had a puncture as the car wasn't turning well to the right. We could see the tyres were holding pressure, so stayed out but throughout the race he was struggling to get close enough to make a pass," he added.

Mercedes is stuck on six victories out of eight Grands Prix. "We'll go off and look at how we can improve in future, but we're really looking forward to Mugello next week, it's an amazing track and we've got the fastest F1 cars of all time which will be really impressive round there."