Mercedes: 'This was damage limitation'

Looking back at the Dutch Grand Prix, where Max Verstappen successfully kept the two Mercedes cars at a distance under great pressure, Andrew Shovlin, strategic director of Mercedes, assesses the biggest pain points in the team. Not only the tyre degradation caused problems, but Shovlin also states that the opportunistic second attempt at an undercut would be handled differently in the future.

"Our car wasn't quite quick enough today and we ended up in a situation where we had to push in dirty air to keep up and it was just taking too much out of the tyres," strategy director Andrew Shovlin began in an official press release from Mercedes. "The pace at the front was very quick and the degradation was moving it towards a two-stop."

Shovlin continues, stating that they should have assessed Hamilton's early undercut attempt a little less opportunistically. We didn't have many options by the final stop, we decided to go relatively early, perhaps optimistically hoping they would take a Soft to cover us but they fitted the Hard and it was working well for them so that was that," said the Brit.

While Mercedes eventually took the extra point for fastest lap, Shovlin also knows that this does not count as a victory. Shovlin: "With Lewis we managed to grab the extra point for fastest lap, which was a bit of damage limitation, but we didn't have the best car here."