Mercedes tyre overheating issues returned in spectacular fashion at the Austrian Grand Prix, turning a weekend that began with hope into their toughest outing of the 2025 Formula 1 season.
Just weeks after celebrating a long-awaited victory at the Canadian Grand Prix, Mercedes and George Russell found themselves off the pace in Spielberg.
Finishing fifth and over a minute behind the McLaren duo, Russell summed up the disappointment: “I was expecting a bad race and it was worse than I even could imagine. The problem is so clear, coming off the back of Canada with the win, with no tyre overheating, we’re the quickest.
“But as soon as you get to a track where there’s a bit of overheating, we drop off so much. The team have been working so hard for six months now to try and solve this issue. We’ve got ideas, but nothing that’s really, we’re not really making major headway right now.”
When the Heat Is On, Mercedes Struggles Surface
The problems at the Red Bull Ring were a mix of factors. Spielberg’s abrasive surface, combined with high-speed corners and soaring track temperatures above 50°C, exposed the W16’s tendency to overheat its tyres.
While Mercedes had looked competitive in Friday practice and qualifying, the real test came during the race as grip faded away. Long corners like Turn 9 punished any car with a narrow operating window, and for Mercedes, that meant a slide down the order and a struggle to fend off even the midfield.
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“It’s the perfect storm. It’s one of the roughest asphalts of the season. It’s a high-speed track, the most laps of the season and 50 degrees Celsius of track,” Russell added, describing the unique cocktail of challenges Mercedes faced.
Qualifying had offered hope, with Mercedes showing good straight-line speed and braking performance, but the car’s behaviour changed completely once race day arrived.
“We felt like there was a direction we wanted to go, which was perfectly logical for Canada, but a little bit counterintuitive for Austria,” explained team principal Toto Wolff.
“Our long runs looked really good. But then obviously the temperatures went up, the grip went up and you end up thinking that maybe it would have been better to stick with what we already knew from last year here.”
Set-Up Gambles and Hard Lessons
The team made some bold set-up choices in Austria, hoping to build on data from recent races in Canada and Barcelona.
“We tried to take something from Barcelona and Montreal, in terms of set-up and aero-mechanical balance, but it was the wrong choice. Now we have ticked this box too. It would have been dramatic if we were playing for a win or a championship, but that is not the case,” Wolff said.
As the temperature soared and the tyres overheated, Mercedes lost performance not just through the corners but also on corner exit, struggling for traction on the abrasive surface.
This was compounded by the fact that Ferrari, who brought an upgrade to Spielberg, managed to pull clear and cement their spot as ‘best of the rest’ behind McLaren. Despite the result, Mercedes’ experimental approach was not without value.
As Wolff pointed out, “The only positive thing I take away from this weekend is that we tried something extreme: in Montreal it worked, here it didn’t. We could have used last year’s set-up and maybe, I don’t know, we would have finished on the podium.”
Where Does Mercedes Go from Here?
With the 2025 British Grand Prix looming, Mercedes faces pressure to find a solution to its chronic tyre overheating.
The team’s engineers will be pouring over data from Austria to understand how they can avoid a repeat at Silverstone and beyond.
The challenge now is not just about pace, but about unlocking consistency across the varied tracks on the F1 calendar.
