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Mercedes: That was really painful for us

Mercedes: "That was really painful for us"

30-06-2019 16:34
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Nicolás Quarles van Ufford

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff knows the Austrian Grand Prix was a tough one for his team, with Valtteri Bottas finishing in third but Lewis Hamilton dropping down to fifth as the cars had cooling issues.

The two Silver Arrows manned the second starting row of the grid and both moved up a place with Max Verstappen's poor start, but they couldn't keep the pace up. Charles Leclerc in first place was driving away, while Sebastian Vettel was charging from behind.

Hamilton even had to swap front wings, with the Brit damaging his nose on the hard kerbstones of the Red Bull Ring, costing him extra time. He eventually got overtaken by Vettel in the final laps, as the German picked the reigning champion off for P4.

"That was really painful for us," Wolff, in his native country of Austria, told Mercedes' social channels.

"Damage limitation today. We knew that we had a real cooling issue on our car and it was worse than expected."

Finally, Wolff wanted to get out of his way to compliment Pirelli on the tyres they have produced for this Grand Prix.

"Congratulations to Pirelli. They deserve a high five. They've done an amazing job giving us a tyre that nobody was able to complain [about] today." 

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