Wolff: 'We could have had pole and that is usually half of the race win'

After the spectacular race weekend at Zandvoort Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says he enjoyed the atmosphere as well as the Dutch fans, who saw their hero Max Verstappen cross the line first. Wolff paid a compliment to the 'sporty' Dutch fans, admitting that the weekend had already been spoiled for Mercedes on Friday.

Wolff begins, extremely diplomatically, with a compliment to the organisation as well as the orange army at Circuit Zandvoort. "An awesome performance of the organisers. The Dutch fans were also great, they were totally respectful and sportsmanlike," the team boss said in a video posted on the twitter account of Mercedes.

The Austrian turned to introspection and concluded that today was a mess at the Mercedes, defending champion in the constructors' classification. "For us it wasn’t the best day, I must say, we lost a lot of track time on Friday with Lewis, so he wasn’t really able to settle in properly."

Wolff continued: "We could have had a pole position, and usually that is half the work for a racewin. We had a sniff of a chance to win, but we didn’t quite anticipate things like they could have been."