Shovlin critical: 'No way we could have challenged Verstappen'

Even if Lewis Hamilton had spared himself the damage to his Mercedes, it would not have been possible for the Briton to make Max Verstappen's life truly miserable in Austria, the team's technical director Andrew Shovlin admits.

Shovlin began his analysis with Autosport.com, stating that a win was never on the to-do list at the Red Bull Ring. "I think we would have been satisfied with a second and a third, which was realistically the best we could have done."

The Mercedes chief continued: "We were the makers of our own issues a bit with the poor qualifying yesterday. So that made it very, very difficult to be even thinking of challenging Max."

"I think in reality, [Verstappen’s] pace was too strong", Shovlin admitted. "Even if Lewis had stint one behind him, I don’t think we’d have troubled them"