Lewis Hamilton has urged his Mercedes team to fix the issues that plagued the team in Austria, resulting in a double retirement for the Silver Arrows. Hamilton was forced to retire with a loss of fuel pressure whilst teammate Bottas a loss of hydraulic pressure.
Speaking to the media after the race, Hamilton reflected on a disappointing race day for the team after seemingly set for a comfortable one-two.
“All areas we’re going to have to work on. The car has been quick all weekend, we were the quickest and then to have two different faults on each car is very unusual. We can’t throw away points.
“We’ve got to find a bulletproof method to move forward with our strategy because if our car was still going it was an easy win for us. We were comfortably ahead.
“But we’ll work on it, we’ll try to re-evaluate and try to win the next race.”
Despite claiming a one-two in qualifying, the new Mercedes upgrades to the power unit had seemed to be doing the trick. But unprecedented failures for them will have them worried in the few days between Spielberg and Silverstone.
“Everyone in the team is feeling the pain today,” he added. “We’ve had such great reliability for so many years. As painful as it is and we are professionals, we really have to take the rough with the smooth.
“This is definitely the worst weekend I can remember us having for a long time. But I have every confidence in my team that we’ll be able to bounce back.”
The retirement meant that Hamilton lost the championship lead back to Sebastian Vettel just a week after taking it off of him. He will be hoping for a more straightforward weekend on home turf at Silverstone.