"It has been our weakest performance this year," claims Wolff after disappointing day for Mercedes at Spa

"It has been our weakest performance this year," claimed Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff after the Brackley-based outfit failed to score any points in the Spa F1 Sprint before it suffered from a lack of performance in the standard qualifying session.

In Saturday's sprint race, George Russell started from P13 on the grid, whilst his team-mate Kimi Antonelli lined up in P19 after both drivers were hampered in Sprint Qualifying on Friday.

In a quiet race, Russell made up one position to come home P12 with Antonelli advancing two positions to P17, leaving Mercedes with no points to collect.

Qualifying proved a tricky affair too with the car struggling for the pace needed to fight for the front two rows of the grid. In Q1, both drivers improved on their final efforts but Antonelli was knocked out in P18.

The four-time Grand Prix winner meanwhile progressed to Q3 but could only manage P6 on his last run.

"As a team, this weekend has fallen far below our standards so far. It has been our weakest performance this year and we need to quickly understand why. We have struggled with a car facing several balance limitations, losing the vast majority of our lap time in the middle sector.

"We knew we would struggle to get into the points in the Sprint given our starting positions, so focused on improving these balance issues for Qualifying. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make sufficient headway and suffered as a result.

Wolff continued: "With a mixed weather forecast for tomorrow’s race, we will be looking to take advantage of any opportunities that come our way.

"We are not fooling ourselves though; the pace of our car has not been sufficient this weekend to challenge at the front and that is unlikely to change tomorrow. We will race hard to maximise our result but must ensure we start the weekend in a much stronger position in Budapest next week."