Despite victory, Mercedes remain critical: 'We gave away chances to Red Bull'
F1 News
- GPblog.com
Although Mercedes claimed on Thursday that Red Bull Racing had the fastest car, it was Lewis Hamilton who finished first at the Portuguese Grand Prix on Sunday. It was not easy, but it was clear that Mercedes was the fastest car on the circuit in the Algarve.
"It was a remarkable and well-deserved win by Lewis. He managed to overtake well twice to take the lead and from there he was able to control the race. Valtteri also had a good start, but was not very fast on the mediums. That allowed Verstappen to place the undercut on us," said Andrew Shovlin to Speedweek.
Chances given to Red Bull
Mercedes' race engineer then saw Bottas dive straight into the pits, but by then it was too late for the Mercedes Finn. "That undercut, along with a moment in turn four, allowed Max to get past Valtteri. He had good speed on the hard tyres and we also believed that he might be able to take the spot back from Verstappen."
Bottas, however, encountered problems with his car, causing him to lose speed. "He had a problem with a sensor near his exhaust. At least he was able to pull a gap to Perez, which allowed us to go for the fastest race lap. We will have to start looking carefully at our decisions though, because we gave Red Bull the chance to counter with Max. If Max hadn't made his mistake in Turn 14, we would have lost valuable points to him as well," said Shovlin.