Mercedes: 'Unfortunately, the virtual safety car scuppered that'

"Our plan all along was to try and make a one stop strategy work if Red Bull and Ferrari went for the two stop as expected, as that would have given us the best chance of fighting for the win today. Unfortunately, the VSC caused by the Alpha Tauri scuppered that as Max would no longer drop behind us, so we took the opportunity to fit the Medium to both cars," Shovlin explained in Mercedes' press release.

For a while it looked like Mercedes had a very good chance of finishing on the podium with both Russell and Hamilton, but the final safety car prevented that. "The final safety car gave us the conundrum of taking track position on the relatively fresh Mediums, or fitting a used Soft from qualifying. Clearly the Medium struggled so that dropped Lewis back to fourth but it was great to see George up there on the podium having driven a very strong race."

Whereas Mercedes proved totally uncompetitive in Belgium, they were at Zandvoort. Shovlin says his team again has a lot of data to analyse. "The car was strong throughout the weekend and that's by far the most important point. We're still trying to get our first win of the year but we are getting closer and closer to making that a reality, so will keep working hard to achieve that," he concludes.