While the record books will show Mercedes leaving Hockenheim with a couple of points, world champion Lewis Hamilton having extended his lead in the process, the German teams knows that other than a truly awful performance that appeared to include the entire team, those points came courtesy of the penalties handed out to the Alfa Romeo duo, penalties the Italian (OK, Swiss) team is appealing.

"We had a painful Sunday in Hockenheim," admits Toto Wolff. "We made mistakes, took the wrong decisions and left Germany with only two points.

"But we love Formula One for the challenges it throws at us," he continued, "as they present an opportunity to improve.

"On Sunday, we were united in our pain; on Monday, we were united in our determination to turn our weaknesses into strengths. We had a number of very open discussions about what went wrong and what steps we need to take to improve.

"I believe that one of the core strengths of our team is the way we handle defeat. We accept responsibility for mistakes so that we can learn and improve - and we will come back stronger from this. The positive is that the next race is only a few days away and that we have the chance to redeem ourselves in Budapest this weekend.

"In recent years, the Hungaroring has been a challenging circuit for us," he admits, wary, no doubt, of the cooling issues that are clearly still affecting the team and are likely to compromise performance this weekend, "but we managed to win there last year and there are a number of reasons to believe our car could be more competitive there this year than in recent seasons.

"Looking at our competition, Ferrari have been very strong on short circuits this year and we expect them to be competitive again in Budapest; Red Bull, too, have won two of the past three races with Max.

"But we haven't lost sight of the fact that we have come out on top in nine of the 11 races so far this year. And we are determined to fight tooth and nail this weekend to achieve another strong result."

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1. Posted by Dr Jeff, 01/08/2019 23:12

"One of the reasons Mercedes has been so successful (perhaps the most important one) is their ability to function as a team. They are employing a great many well-established techniques to foster the team environment, and this has led directly to their overwhelming success. Other teams have good cars, good power trains, good drivers, but over the past few years none have been able to mount a real challenge. The team is the difference. The way they handled this weekend when the wheels well and truely fell off is a perfect example of how to address these sorts of situations. No finger-pointing, no pillorying, no one lost their job, just addressing the issues with the goal of finding solutions and preventing problems from reoccurring. Two basic management principles in action - 'fix the problem, not the blame' and 'eliminate problems, make sure they never happen again.' "

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2. Posted by F1 Yank, 31/07/2019 22:18

"Hopefully it will rain at the Hungaroring like it did in Germany!! I doubt it but it would be nice!
My favorite race at the Hungaroring was with Damon Hill winning in the Arrows!! Almost won and should have, but a broken half shaft or something kept the win from him. Wow!"

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Mercedes had "very open discussions" following Hockenheim horror

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