Mercedes: "A reminder that they race well and never give us anything for free"
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- GPblog.com
At Mercedes they once again praised Red Bull Racing. Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin states that the opportunity for an undercut of Valtteri Bottas arose for a short time, but that the Austrian race team was quick to prevent this by intervening adequately and quickly bringing Max Verstappen in for new tyres.
"There's been a lot of work going on in Brackley over the last week to understand what went wrong in Silverstone, so it's really satisfying to win here in hot conditions. It's been a challenging weekend given the temperatures," Shovlin said in the Mercedes review.
Difficult start Bottas
For Hamilton it was a seemingly simple afternoon. The Brit didn't get into trouble and managed to seize the victory. "He drove a perfect race and he managed the tyres brilliantly," said Shovlin, who saw Bottas have a more difficult Sunday. "He lost places off the line and got squeezed into Turn 1 so had to work through a couple of cars early to get back into the fight at the front, all without taking too much out of the tyres."
Strategically Mercedes might have tried something different in Barcelona. "He was able to follow Max closely and we may conclude that there was a small window where we could have gone for an undercut in that middle stint, but Red Bull covered the situation well. A reminder that they race well and never give us anything for free."
Bottas takes fastest lap
The fact that Bottas finally managed to get the extra World Championship point, still gives Mercedes a good feeling. Valtteri had the chance for to go for fastest lap at the end on fresh medium tyres and it was some consolation to see him break the lap record and get the extra championship point", said Shovlin.