Lewis Hamilton was left disappointed with a P7 finish in the Austrian Grand Prix, after a tough weekend for Mercedes. The Mercedes driver was heard on the team radio claiming that it was tough to drive the car within the track limits, after being told about a black and white flag. He later received a five second time penalty, before going on a tirade over team radio about other drivers also going off track including Sergio Perez. At one stage Team Principal Toto Wolff interjected: "Lewis the car is bad, we know. Please drive it." Hamilton attributes how tough it was to drive the W14 within the track limits to a setup decision that was made prior to the race to help with the car balance. "I took out a lot of front wing because we knew we had a really bad rear end here, so I took it out to maintain that balance and go long," he told media, including RacingNews365.com . "I massively under estimated it and I was almost full lock at the final corners, going into Turn 10 it was just sliding." Both Norris and Perez were heard complaining about Hamilton going off track, but the Mercedes driver felt his rivals were committing similar offences: "As soon as he got past me he went off like at least 10 times and so did Perez, he went off [at] Turn 9 and Turn 10 and didn’t get a penalty.”
In addition to Ferrari, McLaren also brought updates to their car in Austria which enabled Lando Norris to be comfortably ahead of Hamilton throughout the weekend. The seven-time world champion has been left searching for answers over their lack of pace throughout the weekend. "I definitely didn't expect us to be as bad, I don't really have an answer for it," he explained. "The feeling of the car was very much the same as we've had over the last year. [But] compared to the last two races, the last two races are way better." Mercedes plan to bring further upgrades to the next race in Silverstone as part of their upgrade schedule.
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