It's been a hectic 2022 Austrian Grand Prix weekend for Mercedes thus far, both their cars pranged in Qualifying late Friday meant only six hours to repair the cars for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell to finish with and fourth respectively in today's Sprint Race.
The reigning World Champion team acknowledged in their Saturday report: "Thanks to a herculean effort from the team, both cars were able to take part in FP2, which took place just six working hours after Qualifying. This included building a new car for Lewis around the spare chassis."
In the #63 Silver Arrow, Russell made a strong start from P4 and then held the position, containing Perez's pace in the closing laps.
He summed up: "First, thank you to everyone in the garage to get the car ready today. It was a huge team effort so it was good to get points on the board.
"As for the performance, the gap was more than we were expecting. We were 13 seconds behind after 23 laps, so that's nearly half a second per lap. We need to work overnight to understand why we dropped off the pace.
"Small things can make a difference - the tyres weren't easy to manage, and different approaches to downforce levels will play a part tomorrow. But we are in no doubt that we've got work to do," added Russell.
In the sister Mercedes, Hamilton had contact with Gasly at Turn 1, then more on the run to Turn 3, dropping him down to the endP11 at the end of the first lap. He suffered overheating left brake temperatures, possibly due to damage.
Nevertheless, he was able to pass Albon, Bottas and Schumacher to finish eighth putting him one place higher on Sunday's grid than he started today.
Hamilton: I'm grateful I managed to survive out there today
Seven-time F1 World Champion Hamilton said of his day: "The team did such a great job to get the car back together last night and this morning. A big thank you to them and I'm glad I brought it back mostly in one piece. I didn't have a good start, then Pierre moved across on me at Turn 1.
"I don't understand why drivers do that when there's so much space to the right, and I couldn't do anything about it. Then the same happened in Turn 3 with a Williams and Red Bull. I got some sort of damage, but at least could continue.
"After that, I was just trying to catch up. We are slower on the straights, so I had to wait until I was out of the DRS train to overtake the cars in front. That's why it took a few laps to get ahead of Mick. Hopefully, we can race stronger tomorrow - fingers crossed!"
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was full of praise for the heroes behind the scene: "After such an incredible effort from the mechanics to get the cars built and able to race, that was a bit of a disappointing performance in speed terms.
"We failed to show our usual improvement in race pace versus single lap performance, like at other events this year.
"George did a strong job, but the car was lacking the pace to hold on with the train in front. For Lewis, he had contact on lap one which cost him ground.
"Then it was a good battle with Mick, who was fighting hard for position. Lewis eventually came out on top, so he starts the race one place higher than he qualified.
"Now we need to learn the lessons and improve our pace in the grand prix," added Wolff, whose team have won the race in Austria five times in the last eight years.
Shovlin: Everyone in the Mercedes garage did amazing work to get the cars out in time for FP2
Mercedes trackside engineer Andrew Shovlin echoed his boss: "We had a huge amount to do, including a chassis swap with Lewis, but it was great to see how well the team worked under pressure.
"The sprint race by contrast was rather underwhelming. Lewis was lucky not to be taken out when he got squeezed by Gasly in the run to Turn 1, so in some ways a relief to survive that.
"We'll check the car for damage when we get it back but it was a big hit. George didn't quite have the speed to chase the Ferraris and Verstappen, so we were always going to end up fourth but at least we've made it onto the second row for tomorrow.
"We're clearly missing a bit of pace and will study the data and look at what we can do in terms of fine-tuning but it's hard to find much now we're in parc ferme," added Shovlin.
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