Great-Britain - GP preview - Mercedes

Toto Wolff

Austria exposed the biggest vulnerability of our car and it meant we couldn’t challenge for the win at any point of the weekend. We’ve been working on our cooling for a while, but the combination of high temperatures and altitude in Spielberg ultimately meant that we had to do too much temperature management to be competitive. We will continue to work on this to have a better fighting chance at future races in the heat.

Fortunately, the English summer is known for more moderate temperatures, so cooling should not be a major issue for us in Silverstone – although we’ve learned in the past that the weather at the British GP can be highly changeable. Silverstone is a sensational track and the sweeping corners demand a lot from the drivers and the car. We’ve had some of our best performances this year on tracks with a wide range of corner speeds, so on paper we should be in relatively good form. But we’ve also had a number of reliability issues that could have easily robbed us of a considerable amount of points, so we know that we need to stay vigilant and perform to the best of our abilities if we want to be in the fight this weekend.

The British Grand Prix is the first of two Mercedes home races in the upcoming weeks: Silverstone is just down the road from Brackley and Brixworth, as well as being Lewis’ home race; and Hockenheim is a 90-minute drive from the Mercedes HQ in Stuttgart. We’re looking forward to seeing a lot of familiar faces in the audience when the Mercedes family comes to the track to support us over the next two weekends. We will give it everything to make them proud and make the Mercedes star shine brightly.