Russell: Race was an odd one

Qualifying for the Dutch GP was a mixed affair for Mercedes, Russell qualifying fourth while Lewis Hamilton dropped out in Q2, with a grid penalty following that for impeding Sergio Perez.

But in Sunday's race, the eight-time Formula 1 Constructors' Champions failed to repeat their performance especially with Russell who dropped from fourth to seventh at the finish line while Hamilton did not go further up than eighth.

Russell admitted he struggled for grip during the race, something he could not comprehend, and in Mercedes' post race report he said: "Today's race was an odd one.

"We didn't have the pace and that was the case on all three tyre compounds. It felt that I was sliding around quite a lot, suffering from high degradation, and slowly went backwards. We will have to understand why that was as we were relatively quick on Saturday," he explained.

Russell took the chequered flag at Spa - before being disqualified for an underweight car - which handed over the win Hamilton, but Mercedes were the ones setting the pace in the final race before the summer break.

But that was clearly not the case in Zandvoort, Russell added: "Performance does swing circuit to circuit, but we have been up near the front in the past six races. I am therefore confident that this is an outlier.

"We will get to work immediately to understand why we were slower than our competitors today. We have another race next weekend in Monza and we will aim to put in a much better showing there," he concluded.

As for Hamilton, he reflected on his race after starting from 14th, he said: "We knew today was all about damage limitation. We managed to work our way back into the points but ultimately, we didn't have the pace to fight for much more today.

"If we had qualified better yesterday, than it may have been a little different," the Briton lamented. "I enjoyed getting past several cars though and putting the Soft tyre to use in that opening stint. It felt good to move forwards but I'm a little disappointed as if we had a better Saturday, then the fight would have been for more points.

"Strategy wise, we were looking at running to the end on the one-stop," the seven-time F1 Champion pointed out. "I had a lock-up on the Hard tyre though and that meant we switched to the two-stop.

"It was a shame to lose the point for fastest lap at the end, but I should have put in a quicker effort earlier on," he concluded.

Mercedes Team Principal & CEO, Toto Wolff, summed up his team's weekend in the Netherlands, he said in the report: "We had a bad race today. It was quite a contrast to the previous Grand Prix in Spa where we had set the pace and finished first and second on track.

"We clearly got some decisions wrong in terms of how we were running the car here. We will evaluate that quickly so we can avoid another race like this. It is bruising. Sometimes it is good to be bruised though to take a step forward.

"With George, we switched to a two-stop strategy as he was running out of tyre in his second stint," the Austrian revealed. "That higher degradation was likely in part due to some set-up decisions we took. We will need to do a full analysis to understand how much of it was down to that or other factors.

"With Lewis, we planned a two-stop race for him, although we were evaluating the one-stop midway through. However, he suffered a lock up on the Hard tyre and, with no risk behind, we switched him onto the two-stop strategy. His pace was good throughout though and that gives us encouragement.

"There is clearly lots of learning we can take from this weekend and hopefully we can bounce back next weekend in Monza," Wolff concluded.