Mercedes' Team Principal Toto Wolff described watching his team at the Austrian Grand Prix as “painful” in the wake of its subdued display.
Mercedes arrived at the Red Bull Ring chasing a record-equalling 11th straight Formula 1 win but expected high ambient temperatures to prove a challenge.
Air temperature reached 35Ëšc during Sunday’s race and Mercedes was unable to keep up with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
“We knew that it was our Achilles’ heel and we were carrying the problems since the beginning of the season,” said Wolff on cooling.
“We tried to work on mitigating the performance loss, but at the end it was really painful to watch cruising, not being able to defend or attack.
“The next step would have been to remove all the bodywork. So that was not really an option because the sponsors wouldn’t have liked it!
“We were right on the limit. We couldn’t do anything anymore, and it was already very damaging for performance what we did. There was no step left anymore.”
Mercedes nonetheless relinquished only seven points to Red Bull and five to Ferrari, meaning it still holds a 135-point advantage over the Italian marque in the standings.
“I think when you look at the positives we had the car pace,” said Wolff.
“We were running the engine way turned down, lifting and coasting for up to 400 metres — 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 god, we would have a chance to fight for the win. But we were limited by the cooling problems.
“And the front wing [in Lewis Hamilton’s pit stop] – well, we lost 12 seconds or 11 seconds, so the thing that compromised us was not being able to drive the car but just roll around, cruise around.”
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