The two Mercedes cars of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell crashed, in separate incidents, in the qualifying session of the Austrian Grand Prix on Friday. 

Lewis Hamilton, who said that he is expecting a first win this year very soon, came to Austria with back-to-back podiums. The seven-time world champion crashed with about five minutes left in qualifying. He climbed out and inspected the mangled right front tire. He apologized to his team for a rare error.

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When the session restarted, another red flag came out when Russell lost the car’s rear into Turn 10 and crashed.

Lewis Hamilton will start the sprint race, second of 2022, at ninth place. His teammate will be fourth as Max Verstappen of Red Bull is on pole. 

Addressing the crashes, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said that it might be a positive sign for the team. He even joked they were like synchronized swimmers for crashing almost simultaneously in Friday’s dramatic ending to sprint qualifying.

“It’s very rare that you see both drivers crashing out, and especially the circumstances. They looked like, I don’t know how you call it in English, synchron swimmers? So that was a good choreography,” Wolff said Saturday. 

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Wolff looked at the speed of a newly “competitive car” rather than the outcome.

“The last few corners that Lewis attacked were the fastest overall. Would we have fought for pole position? I’m not sure but we would have been maybe within a 10th (of a second) of the frontrunners,” he said. “So that’s improvement, and I’d rather have two cars in the wall fighting for pole than a car that is P8 (in eighth place) and drives Steady Eddie.”

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Mercedes have been struggling to adapt to the rules related to ground effect — where the floor generates aerodynamic grip and causes bouncing. That has improved recently and Wolff is confident extra speed has been unlocked.

“Now that we can actually fight for front positions, I’m really happy to see that they attack. The corner before (he) crashed, Lewis was carrying 10K (kilos) more speed,” Wolff said. “George, you saw he was up on his delta time. I think the summary is that the car is tricky to drive, but it’s faster now and for me that’s absolutely OK.”