Mercedes drivers comment on finishing P7 and P8 in Austria

Mercedes finished an unpleasant race at the Austrian Grand Prix, after only getting 10 points in total from both drivers. This is clearly a result that is not favourable for the German outfit compared to their last race, when Hamilton finished on the podium in Canada and George Russell was running in fourth place ahead of his crash in Montreal.

Following the race, Lewis Hamilton told Sky Sports that this was Mercedes’ pace today, there wasn’t a mechanical issue. "I don't know, there wasn't a problem. There was nothing wrong with the car, the car was fine itself. The way the car felt doesn't surprise me, no."

The seven-time world champion also complimented his former team McLaren and Lando Norris. "McLaren or Lando did a great job today, they were super quick. I wasn't expecting them to be as fast as they were. We weren't expecting them to be as slow as we were either. But this track just highlighted some areas for us to work on. And yeah, not the greatest of days."

George Russell also commented on his car to Sky Sports. "I mean, it's only been 20 minutes since the end of the race, and I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it, but we still have the same car as we had two races ago in Barcelona when we were flying. So the only thing that's probably different is the tyres, something we need to understand."

Russell continued: "Yeah, I mean, it definitely doesn't feel as we want it to. The car's moving around a lot, a little bit worse than all of the other circuits, but the pace was substantially worse than we were expecting. So, yeah, we need to get to the bottom of it."

The Briton still hopes they can do better in his and Hamilton’s home race. "I mean, for sure it's another step in the right direction. It's just another step, as we said, it's clearly circuit dependent at the moment because we're nowhere here. And with the same car, we were good in Canada and we were fast in Barcelona. So that bodes well for Silverstone because Silverstone is more in line with Barcelona than it is this circuit. So we're excited for it."