F1, Mercedes risked not racing in Austria

They finished the race in third and fourth place

The Austrian GP for Mercedes ended with a third and fourth place finish. Lewis Hamilton was once again on the podium and George Russell returned to score heavy points, but both could have not raced.

As technical director Mike Elliott explained to Mercedes channels, the double qualifying incident could have cost dearly: “We only had a spare rear wing and we chose to fit the new parts on Lewis’ car because he would have had to make up more positions. George had a rear wing that may not have had the right downforce.”

“Then after we rebuilt the cars, we also had to re-tune the set-up,” said Elliott, who made one thing clear. Having damaged two cars on Friday, if we had also sustained damage in the Sprint, we would have risked not racing on Sunday.