Lewis Hamilton fears Mercedes face a repeat of their Austria problems at two more races at least this season.
As a heatwave swept into Spielberg on race day, the dominance of the Silver Arrows wilted as the pace of both drivers' was limited by cooling issues.
And as chief engineer Andrew Shovlin explained, they were caused by Mercedes going to extreme lengths for performance.
"Fundamentally the car doesn't have big enough radiators," he said in the team's post-race debrief video. "We were a bit optimistic with how much we could get out of the cooling system.
Also Read:
- Hamilton: Austria excitement proves critics wrong to judge F1 by one race
- Mercedes domination not helping F1 attract new fans, CEO Carey admits
"It's under-delivered to what we hoped we could achieve, and it's meant that we are carrying this issue where in the very hot races we will be struggling to keep everything cool enough, principally to keep the power unit cool enough that we don't do any damage to it.
"In Austria, it was 35C, that actually put us at the upper end of what we could achieve just by opening the car up. So, we were on the limit. When you get to that point you are really limited in your options.
"That is why they were so compromised on performance."
While Mercedes will now undoubtedly work to improve this area, Hamilton admits heat and high altitude could hamper the team again.
“We’ve got Budapest coming up but who knows at other places," he said. "I don’t think it will be in a lot of places but I’m sure they’ll be another one like that, like Mexico maybe.”
The failure to win in Austria meant Mercedes fell just one race short of matching McLaren's 1988 record of 11 straight wins, but the reigning champion ruled out any kind of complacency resulting in their dip.
“I don’t think we needed a weekend like this to remind us,” he said. “We’ve not been complacent at any of the races that we’ve had. It doesn’t do anything for us.
“We knew it would be a difficult weekend for us and it was probably more painful than we thought, but we haven’t been complacent at all.“The guys have worked very hard and it was just one of those days.”
