“He was in a different league today,” Mercedes director shocked by Max Verstappen’s Belgium GP triumph
Follow Us
Max Verstappen
Max Verstappen managed to come away with maximum points from the Belgium Grand Prix, and Mercedes Head of Trackside Engineering Andrew Shovlin has praised the Dutchman on his exceptional outing.
Max Verstappen was in a league of his own at the Spa-Francorchamps Circuit and despite starting the race from P15, was able to hunt down down cars one by one and was ultimately able to land him RB18 on the top step by a substantial margin.
While the 24-year-old had a race to remember, Mercedes did not, and Shovlin while dwelling over the team’s gap to Max said, “He was in a different league today and would have won from anywhere on any strategy,”
“It’s a bit of a shock how far ahead he has been this weekend, we’ve clearly got more work to do than we thought, fingers crossed he isn’t this fast around every track!“
Mercedes has been given a harsh reality check in Belgium and they have admitted that the team has got a lot of work to do if they are to have any hope of getting anywhere near the RB18.
Andrew Shovlin believes Max Verstappen and Red Bull are just too far ahead of Mercedes
While Max was on song in Belgium, Lewis Hamilton had a race to forget as he got knocked out after colliding with Fernando Alonso on the very first lap.
Moreover, the damage was self-inflicted as the Brit while fighting with the Spaniard, did not leave him enough space and went flying into the air.
George Russell, on the other hand, had a decent outing and he managed a P4 finish for the team after coming extremely close to clinching the podium place way from Carlos Sainz.
Mercedes had a mixed outing and Shovlin while dwelling further added, “The weekend overall has been tough. We’d hoped to move forward here with our updates and whilst it seems that Ferrari is closer to us on race pace, Red Bull is clearly not.
“We have struggled with the various compromises the car has here, much more so than the races leading into the summer break and that’s definitely made our lives more difficult.”
Andrew Shovlin has passed the blame for the performance deficit in Belgium on to the compromises that they had to make for the race, however, given that there are still eight more races left on the 2022 calendar, it is going to be up to the Silver Arrows to get some performance out of the car that would help its drivers is getting closer to the Red Bull team.
Stay Updated!
Rishabh Negi
(3244 Articles Published)