Mercedes judges harshly: "We were behind the times this weekend"

Lewis Hamilton failed to get any further than second place during Saturday afternoon's qualifying session for the Dutch GP, while his competitor Max Verstappen secured pole position. It makes for a great challenge, as Andrew Shovlin also knows.

At the Zandvoort circuit, overtaking is expected to be difficult during the race, making qualifying very important for the drivers. "We were behind this weekend," Shovlin stated in the press release. "Losing time with Lewis yesterday didn't help, but we were struggling with the car through Turn 2 and 3 and that was a trend that continued today in the morning session. We made some changes for qualifying, but we didn't have much visibility on that in the first half of qualifying because we were running on medium first and came out on cold tyres in the second session due to a red flag.

Unlike Mercedes, Red Bull Racing can employ trickier strategies this weekend. Sergio Pérez's sixteenth starting position means that the driver looks unlikely to be fighting for the points this weekend.