A furious Toto Wolff says his Mercedes-AMG Motorsport‘s performance and result in the 2019 German Grand Prix “hurts us to the core” as the team leave their home race with just two points added to their championship campaign.
Having run first and second in the opening stages of the race, Lewis Hamilton finished eleventh, outside of the points but was eventually promoted to ninth following post-race penalties applied to both Alfa Romeo Racing cars.
Hamilton’s struggles, which included a crash, a botched pit-stop and a high-speed spin opened the door for team-mate Valtteri Bottas to close the gap in the drivers’ standings, but the Finn crashed out of fourth place late in the race, posting his first retirement of the year.
The “disastrous” result comes not only at Mercedes’ home race but their 200th grand prix, during a weekend in which the team were celebrating 125 years in motorsport…at an event they were subsidising! Toto Wolff has labelled it “the most difficult day we’ve had in a long time.”
“This one hurts us to the core: it was a disastrous result today,” said Woff. “We had a decent start of the race with good pace. Then obviously you add incidents, crashing out, tricky conditions, the wrong calls and in the end you’re left with zero points after running 1-2 in the opening laps.
“Lewis’s incident happened right at the pit entry, so we were not prepared when he came in and made the wrong calls afterwards. Valtteri crashed like many other drivers today, which made a bad day even worse for us.
“Our 200th race in F1 has been the most difficult day we’ve had in a long time, but we are united in the pain as we are united in the joy of winning. Today is a day for us to look at our mistakes and to learn from them, so we can come back stronger next weekend.” Despite their worst weekend for a number of seasons Mercedes still dominate the constructors’ standings, 148-points clear of their nearest rivals, Scuderia Ferrari. Lewis Hamilton leads the driver’s standings by forty-one points over Valtteri Bottas.
