F1 News
Why Mercedes was not competitive at all during the Dutch GP in Zandvoort
- Sandy van Wijngaarden
Before the summer break, the Mercedes team won several races. At Zandvoort, this speed seemed to disappear for a while. Lewis Hamilton did not advance to Q3 in qualifying and in the race both drivers finished outside the podium. James Allison, Mercedes' technical director, explains where the pace difference lies.
In Austria, George Russell won, in Britain Lewis Hamilton won and in Belgium the team finished one-two on track until Russell was disqualified. In the Netherlands, Russell had to make do with seventh place and Hamilton with eighth.
Mercedes was wrong with the settings at Zandvoort
James Allison tries to explain this difference in performance. ''It won't be as simple as, 'Oh, the circuit doesn't suit the car.' Whether or not you have a good weekend depends on a lot of things. And they all have to be almost all right to get what you call the true speed of the car out. In the run-up to the summer break, we managed to hit our stride at almost every track. We got a bit off track at Spa, but managed to pull it back just in time.''
In the Netherlands, the team did not manage to make ends meet. ''This weekend at Zandvoort, with the weather as it was on Friday and the decisions we made at night, we just didn't manage to get the rhythm we needed to get the best out of the car. And small mistakes, small errors in the set-up change you from very competitive to very mediocre. It's tight at the top. And we didn't get it right this weekend and therefore had a mediocre result,'' said Allison.
This article was written in collaboration with Ben Stevens.
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