Mercedes: Hamilton's car rebuilt in three and a half hours

The seven-time Formula 1 Champion had one of his rare moments of error while pushing in Q3 of qualifying in Austria, lost the car at Turn 7 ending up in the barriers. He later expressed his disappointment in himself, and duly apologized to his team.

Mercedes however did not have only one car to repair, but two, as George Russell also binned his W13 shortly after Hamilton losing it at Turn 10.

However it was the #44 Silver Arrow that sustained more damage, requiring a chassis change and a full rebuild from scratch.

Mercedes Technical Director reflected on his team's work load in Mercedes post Austria Race Debrief, saying: "There is a huge amount of work that went into getting those cars ready.

"In Lewis's case he had done so much damage to the chassis, actually only cosmetic damage, but damage that we couldn’t fix in the field. We had to sort of build his car from scratch on Saturday morning," he revealed.

"So, that car had to be built from nothing, fitting the engine, the gearbox, all the suspension, all of the sort of car systems that bolt around the chassis, all had to be put in place.

"The mechanics managed to do that in three and a half hours on Saturday morning, which is an amazing achievement, and all credit to them for actually getting us back out and into FP2," Elliott added.

Hamilton made it back on track towards the end of FP2, and Mercedes tech boss commented: "The advantage of getting out into FP2 is that you can actually make sure that the set-up on Lewis's car was right, that the balance was right and that he was happy with the car in time for [the] Sprint."

Mercedes brought a major upgrade to their W13 in Barcelona for the Spanish Grand Prix which seemed to put them on the right track to recovery, and Elliott feels the car had pace in Austria as well, something that was somehow masked by their drivers' qualifying crashes pushing to the limit.

"I think if you saw on Friday, we were encouraged by the pace we had," he pointed out. "I think in qualifying we were going through the various qualifying sessions thinking, you know, that we had a strong chance to getting ourselves on the front row of the grid, a position we haven’t found ourselves in in recent races.

"That is possibly why we ended up with two accidents with both cars: the drivers were just trying to find that extra little bit in the car, trying to get ourselves onto that front row of the grid, the potential pace we believe we had in that car.

"While we want to be fighting at the front, we want to be the quickest car we possibly can be… in circuits like this I think that's a good result for us and it shows that the bits we are bringing to the car are starting to make the step forward we want to make.

"Hopefully we can keep making those steps forward and get ourselves into a position where we can compete at the front in every race," Elliott maintained.