Mercedes boss Toto Wolff played down reports about a crisis meeting held at Brackley following the team's recent struggles with their Formula 1 car's performance.
Wolff was facing the media over the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend and was asked about the "big meeting" George Russell mentioned following the Belgian Grand Prix to discuss Mercedes' latest woes.
Mercedes have reverted to an older specification rear suspension trying to sort out rear stability problems with their W16, as Russell and even his rookie teammate, Kimi Antonelli, have been finding it difficult to drive their cars with confidence.
When asked about the matter by Sky Sports F1 - Germany, Wolff responded: "That’s always such nonsense - this talk of a 'crisis meeting'.
"We have meetings every week to assess where the car stands and what we can improve. And one of those meetings was last week, exactly as planned, with the drivers.
"We do that regularly, every few months. That was the 'big' meeting. And it was very interesting," Wolff maintained.
Russell: My comments were exaggerated
Russell, whose comments started this whole discussion, tried to clarify matters; he said: "I think my comments about a big meeting were probably exaggerated a bit because we talk monthly with everyone back at the factory.
"We talk, obviously, weekly with the people who are here on the race-team side of things, so it's nothing abnormal.
"That meeting was actually planned probably three or four weeks ago, just as all of these meetings are," he revealed. "But clearly our performance as a team has gone backwards in the last six or seven races, and we're trying to unpick why that may have been.
"I think there's a number of factors at play. Obviously, we struggle a bit in the hotter conditions—Spa wasn’t hot, but generally we struggle in the hotter conditions.
"We're now in summer; start of the season was spring, and we brought some little things with updates, and we think that may not have been performing as we hoped.
"So we'll revert back on some small items. I think we've potentially just lost our way slightly and are just going to go back to basics, focus on the main parts of the car, and see where that takes us," Russell concluded.
Russell was in the top ten in both practice sessions in Hungary on Friday but was in the region of eight tenths of the pace of the McLarens.
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