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Lewis Hamilton and George Russell: Mercedes' weather calls cost us at Dutch GP
Downpour arrived for the start of the race, but Mercedes told their drivers that it would ease up after just a couple of minutes
Mercedes are a team who pride themselves on their professionalism and protocols but it is fair to say they had an absolute howler in Holland yesterday.
A “catastrophic” decision to stay out at the beginning of what ultimately turned into a nervy, rain-lashed Dutch Grand Prix, in the mistaken belief that the rain shower that coincided with the start of the race would “only last a couple of minutes”, cost George Russell and Lewis Hamilton big points. Certainly a podium. Possibly more.
Hamilton was adamant afterwards that his Mercedes was, for once, “on pace” with Max Verstappen’s Red Bull. And while he was always too far back to contest the race, having lined up 13th on the grid, his teammate Russell started third and might have enjoyed a far more profitable day had Mercedes made the right calls.
It was, as Russell noted, “a huge shame” for the team given the car’s pace. Toto Wolff promised an inquest.
“We stayed out catastrophically too long,” agreed the Mercedes team principal. “We will review thoroughly. “The situation is never one person or one department. It is the communications between driver, pitwall, strategy and then all of us take a decision. It was absolutely sub-par from all of us and that includes me.”
In the end, while Mercedes were left asking what might have been, with Hamilton recovering to finish sixth and Russell retiring altogether following late contact with Lando Norris’s McLaren, Verstappen held his nerve and his focus to tie Sebastian Vettel’s record of nine consecutive wins in Formula One.
The Dutch driver may have the fastest car, but he is driving so brilliantly at the moment he deserves every accolade going. It is not easy to go through race after race error-free, but that is what he is doing.
Compare and contrast with his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez who qualified seventh here, recovered to lie second only to then spin off following a late deluge, gifting second place to Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso. To add insult to injury Perez then got caught speeding in the pitlane, incurring a five-second penalty which dropped him to fourth behind Alpine’s Pierre Gasly.
These are the sorts of mistakes Verstappen simply does not make. Not that there weren’t any number of potential banana skins.
After a bizarre and very Dutch pre-race ceremony involving Andre Rieu and an orchestra of musicians dressed like Disney-princesses, Verstappen actually lost his lead right at the start after he too fell victim to the brief shower at the start.
Staying out even one extra lap proved calamitous. Hamilton did and came out dead last. Russell stayed out five laps, by which time he was behind his teammate who had started 10 laps behind him. “I was forecast for a podium. f---. How did we mess this up?” he asked his team plaintively over the radio.
Verstappen, who also stayed out one extra lap, also tumbled a long way down the field, to 13th. But he had managed to regain the lead by lap 13 following a second round of pit-stops. And looked to be cruising to another victory only for a torrential downpour to hit the Zandvoort circuit with eight laps of the race remaining.
The slippery conditions caused a number of drivers to go flying off at Turn 1, including Perez and Hamilton, both of who managed to keep going. Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu was not so lucky, hitting the barriers with such force that it brought out a red flag.
After a delay of 43 minutes, the race eventually resumed with a rolling restart and Verstappen completed his task with a minimum of fuss to claim his ninth straight win. He will now go for the outright record in Monza next weekend.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was positively purring. “To win nine in a row is insane,” he said. “The most impressive thing for me this weekend is all the pressure that Max is under and the expectation of 100,000 Dutch fans. A lot would have cracked under that pressure. Max is in a period of his career where he is just simply untouchable and I don’t think there is any driver on the grid that would be able to achieve what he is doing in that car.”
As for Mercedes, they finished the race with excellent pace, Hamilton challenging Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz for fifth and Russell passing Norris for seventh before the contact which caused a puncture and led to his retirement. But that only made their disastrous calls at the start even more frustrating.
“The race was over before it really got started,” Russell agreed. “The information we got about the weather was totally wrong.
“We need to look into that, to see why the others decided to pit and what information they had that we didn’t, and make sure we don’t make the same mistake again.”