Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said the Austrian Grand Prix was “painful” to watch because of how far off the pace his cars had to lap.

Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas were both told to lift-and-coast due to the cooling problems the team experienced at the Red Bull Ring

Wolff said the team anticipated the problem before they arrived in Austria. “We knew that it was out Achilles Heel and we were carrying the problem since the beginning of the season,” he explained. “We tried to work on mitigating the performance loss. But at the end it was really painful to watch them cruising, not being able to defend or attack.”

Before the race weekend Hamilton said the Mercedes drivers would have to do 300 metres of lift-and-coasting. However it searing temperatures on Sunday the drivers had to back off even more.

Had it not been for that Wolff believes they would have been competitive. “When you look at the positive side we had the car pace,” he said.

“We were running the engine way turned down, lifting and coasting for up the 400 metres, I mean it’s almost having no throttle rolling downwards, and still able to pull in some decent lap times. So I think we would have a go, we would have a chance to fight for the win, but we were limited by the cooling problems.”

Hamilton posted his worst result of the season so far with fifth place after he had to have his front wing replaced. “We lost 11 to 12 seconds,” Wolff confirmed. “But I think that the thing that compromised us today was not being able to drive the car but just cruise around.”

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2019 F1 season