28/08/2023
NEWS STORY
Mercedes boss, Toto Wolff promises a full review of the team's Zandvoort performance after describing it as subpar.
Lewis Hamilton was the only driver to start on the medium tyres, while teammate George Russell, who started from third on the grid, finished a distant 17th.
Russell, who momentarily held the lead in the chaos of the first downpour, was among the last to pit, and once the field settled had dropped to 16th, dropping even further back as the drivers switched back to slicks. Meanwhile, teammate Hamilton made his first stop just one lap earlier, though he was among the first to switch back to slicks.
"I was forecast for a podium, how did we mess up," demanded Russell as the field settled.
"I think we stayed out catastrophically too long," Wolff told Sky Sports at race end. "We got it completely wrong, we will review thoroughly.
"The situation is never one person or one department," he continued. "It is the communications between driver, pit wall, strategy, weather and then all of us taking decisions.
"That was absolutely subpar from all of us, and that includes me," he added. "It’s good when it hurts. When it stings, it sticks."
"It’s annoying because the car had really good pace," he sighed. "But from there on it was just recovering as good as we could.
"We saw at the end on the intermediates George had Max’s pace and Lewis was very strong behind Sainz. We could have been much further ahead."
Despite his disappointment, Wolff takes some comfort from the fact that the car had pace, even if the team didn't take advantage of it.
“I’d rather have good pace, a fast race car and a mediocre result even if it hurts," he said. "But it’s still bittersweet because the result is just really bad. It could have been, but that doesn’t count in our sport."
"In those conditions, if we'd made the right call, I had the pace to be challenging the top two," said Hamilton. "I think we would have been challenging Max if I'm really honest. Particularly when we got to the dry.
Pace-wise I think we weren't terribly far off," he insisted. "I'm not saying that we'd beat them, but I think we would have been close."
"The race was over before it really got started," said Russell. "I think the information we had regarding the weather was totally wrong and we thought the rain was going to last for a couple of minutes. It clearly lasted for longer, so that was a real shame. A podium was missed."
Though Hamilton eventually finished sixth, Russell was forced to retire suffered a puncture following contact with Lando Norris as they battled for position at the restart that followed the red flag stoppage.
"We made a good recovery," said the Briton, "and then just contact with Lando, an unfortunate racing incident, causing the puncture. So yeah, disappointing but good that we had a fast race car."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Zandvoort here.