Q3 this Friday had two red flags due to the accidents of Hamilton and Russell suffering from oversteer in the W13. The two drivers ended up against the wall and thus ended their hopes of fighting for a pole that Verstappen would end up taking.
Lewis Hamilton spun out at Turn 7, where the car ended up at the end of the gravel run-off, before hitting the barrier sideways and damaging both front and rear right-hand corners.
For his part, George Russell skidded backwards against the wall at the exit of the last corner after losing control of the car.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff discussed what had happened at the directors’ press conference, confirming that they would be installing new floors in both cars. For their part, they will have to overhaul the gearboxes, plus Russell will likely need a new rear wing and “a lot of other little parts”.
Wolff commented, “In the garage yesterday, early evening, it looked like someone had dropped a Lego car on the ground.”
The Austrian praised the mechanics’ late-night work to repair the cars before joking that “a third” of the inflation-driven budget cap increase, which was announced on Friday, had already been spent in a single session. .
Wolff added that he would rather have a competitive car that fights for pole and ends up in an accident than being in the bottom of the top 10.
“We had a competitive car. The last few corners Lewis attacked were the fastest overall,” he defended.
“Would we have fought for pole? I’m not sure, but we would have been maybe a tenth, a tenth and a half off the front… at a circuit where our car wasn’t that good before. So that’s an improvement. “.
“I’d rather have two cars on the wall fighting for pole than one car that’s eighth and goes easy.”
When asked by Motorsport.com to explain the cause of the runaways – which were two similar cases of Russell and Hamilton oversteering possibly due to wind or aerodynamic imbalance – he hinted that it could have been a double driving error.
Wolff detailed: “The car is still difficult to drive and now that we can fight for the front positions, I am very happy to see them attack.”
“Lewis in the previous corner was 10km/h faster and he got to Turn 6 and then he was 10km/h faster in the turn and he didn’t make the corner.”
“And a bit of the same for George. He saw he was ahead of the expected time in that last corner.”
“That was a particular strength of his previous rounds, and he went too far.”
“So whether it was windy or whatever, I think the bottom line is that the car is hard to drive. But now it’s quicker and for me that’s the best thing.”
