The F1 Austrian GP was a weekend to forget for Mercedes, with Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew Shovlin, admitting that ‘fundamentally the pace wasn’t there’ in the W16.
Mercedes came into the Austrian GP with relatively tame hopes, despite coming off the back of George Russell’s first win of the season in Canada. Coming into the Red Bull Ring, many would expect the same level of performance, with the silver arrows on the front foot.
However, the team struggled from the outset, with Russell qualifying fifth and Antonelli qualifying ninth.
Andrew Shovlin admitted on Mercedes’ Akkodis race debrief, that qualifying was a tough point of the weekend for the team.
“We had some issues in qualifying, the car wasn’t quick enough, so getting through to Q3 with both drivers was quite a challenge. We then missed the flag with Kimi which is annoying because he could have started further up the grid.”
It got worse for the team as the lights went out. Antonelli made contact with Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, taking both drivers out of the race at turn 3.
This is where Shovlin noted the team’s lack of pace overall.
“In the race, well, fundamentally the pace wasn’t there anyway. We were really struggling in those conditions and then obviously Kimi had that unfortunate incident with Max which took them both out early on.”
While Russell survived the first corner, he suffered a severe lack of pace in the race. He finished in fifth, not falling back from where he started, but unable to progress as the McLarens and Ferraris thumped their rivals from Brackley.
Hot temperature troubles
Famously, Mercedes in the current era of Formula One have struggled in warmer temperatures. They have often found success with the cooler race weekends, much like Spa or Silverstone.
This was something Shovlin touched on.
“It’s no secret we haven’t been good at the very hot races. Saying that, Montreal was reasonably hot, but the nature of that circuit suits us. So the track there was 50 degrees. We were able to win the race, but it’s very much helped by the fact that the corners are slower, there’s less energy in them, it’s also a newer tarmac. So there’s plenty that we need to be working on.”
Directly related to the hotter temperatures, tyre degradation has become an important talking point in the 2025 F1 season. McLaren’s ability to make their tyres last longer than the rest of the grid often putting them ahead.
Shovlin admitted this is one of the aspects that puts Mercedes behind in the warmer conditions.
“It’s definitely linked to the tyres, you know Pirelli tyres like to be cool.
“At the moment we look to be running them hotter than some of our competition, particularly hotter than McLaren. We’re always developing in that area but as is everyone else, but we’re just trying to learn as quick as we can.”
Issues in Austria
Mercedes has historically been strong around Silverstone, with the cooler temperatures working well with their cars. Shovlin talked about the issues from Austria and how much that will affect the team coming into Silverstone.
“Well, there were actually a couple of issues in Austria. So it wasn’t just overheating, some of our problems in qualifying were early on in the lap in some of the slow corners, now we’re not really overheating there, and we were losing a chunk of time.
“The balance was quite tricky, we were struggling with brake locking in some corners, we were struggling with stability in others and in recent races we’ve changed quite a bit how we’ve been running the car. That philosophy we carried into Austria, clearly it didn’t work very well.“
Silverstone hopes
Building on everything the team learnt in Austria, Shovlin talked about the approach the team have planned for Silverstone.
“As I said there’s the temperature issue but on top of that we’ve got to get the car in a better place, and I’m optimistic we can make some progress for Silverstone because we were reasonably strong there.
“We’ve got a good benchmark from last year in terms of the setup and that’s what we’re going to be trying to understand to work out what’s the best place to start on Friday when we’re in FP1.”
The hopes are high coming into Silverstone with Shovlin admitting the home race of the team was the focus of the teams mind after the F1 Austrian GP.
“Silverstone’s quite a different challenge, the track’s got even faster corners, it’s likely to be quite a bit cooler and the setup that you need there and the challenges that it presents for the tyres are quite different. So whilst we want to understand Austria, we need to make sure that we’re getting the right focus, the engineering team and the driver’s focus on what we’re going to be faced with in the next few days.
“Also it’s obviously a home Grand Prix for the team, you know the chassis are made so close to the circuit as are the power units, there’ll be a lot of the staff there, and then it’s also the big home race for George.
“So we’ll be working really hard, it’s a fantastic event, we’re looking forward to it and hopefully as I said we can bounce back strongly.”
