Shovlin: 'We're going to do everything we can to close that gap'

Mercedes has not yet managed to break Red Bull's run of victories. Next week Formula 1 will race again in Austria, so there is work to do for the team.

In Mercedes ' official press release, their engineer Andrew Shovlin says more about their race: "We had a solid race and the team worked well, but unfortunately the car lacked the pace to challenge Max. In the first stint, it was clear we couldn't put them under pressure; Lewis had a little more degradation and we decided to stop when the rear started to move a little on corner exit."

"Lewis stayed with Max during the first part of the second stint, but it was clear we couldn't get close and so we took our foot off the gas to make sure we didn't run out of rubber. All that was left was to go for the fastest lap at the end," the engineer explains.

Mercedes has work to do

For Valtteri Bottas, the race was positive though, as he managed to take back spot three from Sergio Perez. "He played well with the tyre advantage in the first stint and looked ready to pass Sergio on track, but he came in before losing his position. We planned to go long and compensate, but their pit stop problems allowed us to keep the position on that lap. Later in the race we wanted to make two stops, but it wasn't clear and we didn't want to risk our podium position, so we stuck with the one-stop option," Shovlin analyzed.

"The softer tyres will mix things up a bit next week and we clearly have some pace to gain, but we will use the next few days to try and do everything we can to close that gap," the engineer finishes. Pirelli has made softer tyres available for next week's race, hoping for different strategies to make the race more exciting.