Toto Wolff says Mercedes needs to “retrace the weekend” to understand why its performance fell away over the United States Grand Prix.
Mercedes headed to Austin with a promising record at the Circuit of the Americas, winning five of the last six races held at the track – including the most recent event in 2019.
But despite taking the lead on the opening-lap, Lewis Hamilton failed to deny title rival Max Verstappen from claiming his eighth win of the season and, in doing so, extend his lead in the drivers’ standings to 12 points.
Red Bull’s double podium, with Sergio Perez finishing in third place, also saw it cut Mercedes’ advantage in the constructors’ championship, now standing at 23 points.
Mercedes looked to have a pace advantage over Red Bull in Austin as it had done in Russia and Turkey, but as the weekend progressed it fell behind its rivals, with Verstappen securing pole position and winning the race on an aggressive strategy.
“We could have won the race of course, because we were in the lead and we had a very strong pace on the hard tyre,” said Mercedes team boss Wolff, as quoted by The Race.
“But in a way, we need to retrace the weekend from Friday to Sunday. Where did we misjudge? Where did we get it wrong? What did we do well?
“And there will be plenty of discussions, positive discussions about what to learn from this weekend.”
In Friday’s opening practice session, Mercedes was almost a second quicker than Red Bull, but having run its power unit in a high mode knew its pace was being flattered.
The Brackley-based outfit still felt it looked in good shape, but admitted in hindsight that FP2 was more reflective of its struggles for the remainder of the weekend.
“We knew that we were running the PU quite turned up at that point, so that was flattering us and also we could see Max didn’t really get a lap in properly,” said Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.
“He had a lot of issues with traffic and things.
“So we were probably overly…maybe optimistic is the wrong word, but we thought we’d started the weekend well.
“What we saw in FP2 though was a more clear picture of where our pace actually was.
“And it wasn’t really that we were making bad decisions on set-up. But as it got hotter and as it got windier we were struggling more.
“That FP2 picture I think was the one we saw through Saturday and Sunday. That was the real indication.”
Despite overtaking Verstappen at the start, Hamilton struggled to build a lead on the medium compound tyre, but found the Mercedes much more competitive on the hards in the final two stints as he hunted down the Dutch driver through the race.
Shovlin acknowledged Mercedes had more pace on the hard tyre, saying it will look over what it could have done differently to optimise the cars performance.
“That’s the thing we need to look at in detail now,” Shovlin said.
“What could we have done better to adapt the car? Are there options we could have taken advantage of on the strategy? And in particular, why were we so weak on that medium?
“Because Max was sat right behind us in the first stint and that gave us the impression that we were significantly off the pace.
“But then when we got on to the hard tyres, the car was working much better and Lewis was able to push and we had a car that could race them.
“So there’s a fair bit we need to understand but the key to this championship is going to be optimising the car track to track.
“We just need to get our heads stuck into that job rather than worrying or being frustrated about the outcome here.”
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