While consultant Dr. Helmut Marko of Red Bull praised Lewis Hamilton's triumph at Silverstone, marking an end to his three-year absence from the winners' podium, the seven-time world champion is set to depart the resurgent Mercedes team for Ferrari at season's end.
"You can only congratulate him," the Austrian expressed to Sky Deutschland post the British GP. "You could see his strength in terms of tyre management that that shows how much experience and speed he still has."
The driver Hamilton, 39, is replacing at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz, is currently eyeing the vacant Mercedes seat for 2025 with keen interest.
"Look at where Mercedes was six races ago and where they are now," observed the Spaniard after securing fifth place on Sunday, despite claiming it was "one of the most solid" performances of his career.
"The picture is clear," Sainz continued. "They (Mercedes) are developing better. We have neither confidence nor pace.
Our rivals have improved their cars and added tenths, while we have lost two or three months of development. We have not made the right decisions recently, but we have returned to a car that we know and we have to continue improving it from there," he explained.
"Now we need some time in the wind tunnel and at home to sort out a new package that will really bring us performance."
Ferrari's developmental struggles have reached a point where the team ditched its Barcelona upgrade at Silverstone due to worsening "bouncing" issues and reverted to the car specifications used at Imola.
"It's been a nightmare for three or four races unfortunately," Charles Leclerc, Sainz's teammate, mentioned on Sunday.
"The main problem is the pace we have been losing for a while."
Speculation suggests that Ferrari's recent downturn might be linked to distractions and rumors about Adrian Newey potentially joining and the potential exit of technical director Enrico Cardile, similar to the unrest seen at Red Bull.
Team boss Frederic Vasseur has dismissed such claims.
"It's the people outside the team who talk about Adrian and Enrico," he stated firmly at Silverstone. "We never start our debriefings talking about these things."
Vasseur also refuted suggestions that preparing for Hamilton's arrival next year could be affecting Ferrari's current season. "I am happy for Lewis," he remarked, "but I am focused on this season. We have enough to talk about today and I don't want to think about that. We will have time to talk about Lewis and welcome him this winter.
"Now let's focus on the job to do. We are still second in the constructors' and we have 70 points to catch up to Red Bull, but if we can score points with two cars we can reduce this gap."
Acknowledging the problematic upgrade package introduced in Barcelona, Vasseur revealed, "We did a test between the two packages on Friday and we decided to converge on just one package on Saturday. If we look at the race that Carlos did here, the potential was not so bad. After 25 laps he was a tenth from Max (Verstappen)."
The Frenchman said the team will "decide in Budapest", the next race weekend, how to proceed with the currently-paused Barcelona upgrade.
"I think Silverstone is one of the most aggressive circuits in terms of bouncing, which is one of our weak points," he admitted. "Today we fixed it and this can give us optimism for the next race." body check tags ::
