Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team will consider themselves unlucky despite walking away from the Dutch Grand Prix with a second and fourth place finish. Lewis Hamilton felt he should have at battled for his first win of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship, but a series of unlucky events ended up losing him the podium as Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and his own team-mate George Russell overtook him on fresh tyres. Russell had a successful afternoon finishing on the podium for the sixth time this season.
Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin was pleased with the progress the team made, and how important a good strategy was to their success.
“Our plan all along was to try and make a one stop strategy work if Red Bull and Ferrari went for the two stop as expected, as that would have given us the best chance of fighting for the win today. Unfortunately, the VSC caused by the Alpha Tauri scuppered that as Max would no longer drop behind us, so we took the opportunity to fit the Medium to both cars.
“We were then looking good to get both on the podium when the final safety car gave us the conundrum of taking track position on the relatively fresh Mediums, or fitting a used Soft from qualifying. Clearly the Medium struggled so that dropped Lewis back to fourth but it was great to see George up there on the podium having driven a very strong race.“
Mercedes will look to push on and get their first win of the season, and they will be hoping that they won’t look back on this opportunity with regret.
“We always go away and review where we could have improved so we will do that as always, but more importantly, this weekend has been an altogether more positive picture than the one from a few days ago in Spa.”
“The car was strong throughout the weekend and that’s by far the most important point. We’re still trying to get our first win of the year but we are getting closer and closer to making that a reality, so will keep working hard to achieve that.”