Toto Wolff, Team Principal of the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 Team was pretty happy with his drivers’ performance at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya last Sunday. Both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell produced strong race’s, but for completely different reasons.
“We need to just unpick this now, analyse the data, and try to improve step-by-step for a race win. George [Russell] put up a spectacular defence to Max [Verstappen], the way he positioned the car was spot-on, the kind of racing we love to see and he managed the car well at the end to bring home another podium.
“For Lewis [Hamilton], misfortune on the opening lap but what a recovery drive from then on, fantastic. As a driver, it’s always difficult when you are 50 seconds down but we never give up, and his pace at the end was stunning, he could have raced for the win.“
“There are positives to take from the weekend” – Andrew Shovlin
Andrew Shovlin, trackside engineering director for Mercedes, was equally as encouraged by the result as Wolff was. The Silver Arrows certainly took a huge step in the right direction in Spain, now it’s important for the famous side to maintain their new found belief.
“The most encouraging thing is the improvement in pace that we have seen this weekend; a lot of hard work has gone into understanding the issues and bringing parts to the track for this race. We can now see a route to develop our way out of this and back into a position where we can fight for pole and wins.
“We’ve got some unusual tracks coming up, starting with Monaco where we need to focus more on low-speed performance but we’ve got some parts in the pipeline that can hopefully help in that regard. After some tough months in Brackley and Brixworth, it was great to feel like we were racing again, we’re determined to be part of the battle for these championships and today has given us belief that we can do just that.“
