General
Wolff: "We need to improve the reliability of the car quickly"
- GPblog.com
Mercedes can't really complain about the results they achieved in the first race. After all, Valtteri Bottas won the Grand Prix and Lewis Hamilton also scored points, despite his penalty. Technically, however, both cars had problems with a chance of failure. Mercedes wants to prevent that at all costs. So they still have work ahead of them and that has to be done faster than normal.
Working on reliability
In the preview of Mercedes, team boss Toto Wolff says that the reliability of the cars now demands the most attention. "The result of the first race looks good on paper, but the reality is that we were fortunate to finish the race. Reliability caused us real concern and it is something we are working on as our highest priority."
They will have to solve it quickly, because this year's calendar is still highly uncertain after the eight races. Because of this it should be possible to get the best out of every race and of course a malfunctioning car won't help. "In a shorter season with a yet to be determined number of races, every point counts, so we need to improve quickly on that front."
Already started on Friday
The problems that both cars had because of the coarse kerbstones in Austria, which has an effect on a sensor in the gearbox, already came to light on Friday. Since then Mercedes has been busy fixing it, but that takes some time. So the question is whether they have solved it completely by next weekend.
"We first noticed the issue on Friday and immediately started working on mitigations for the next races, both at the factory and at the track. We will run new components this weekend to improve the situation." If Mercedes has solved it in time, a 'dangerous' problem will fall away for them and they can go even further, which of course is a challenge for the other teams.