Toto Wolff commends strategist James Vowles’ ‘guts’ after apology

Mercedes chief Toto Wolff has commended team strategist James Vowles after he apologised to Lewis Hamilton over team radio, saying it takes "guts" to admit your error live in front of millions of viewers.

Hamilton had been leading the race when team-mate Valtteri Bottas pulled off the circuit with a hydraulic issue. That meant the Virtual Safety Car was called out and all of the front-runners, bar Hamilton, were called in to make a stop for fresh tyres.

That strategic error cost Hamilton the lead of the race as he later emerged in fourth place when he eventually stopped. Although the Briton would go on to retire from the race with his own technical issue.

Wolff admitted it was simply a strategic error that cost them the lead and what would have been, without Hamilton's mechanical failure, an almost certain victory.

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"We made a mistake and what I think happened is that we were running one and two and controlling the race and suddenly you see Valtteri stopping with a hydraulic leak," explained Wolff. "The VSC came out and we had half a lap to react and we didn't. Fact. This is where we lost the race.

"At that stage with the VSC, pitting is probably 80 per cent the thing you need to do. With one car out there against two others the thinking process was what would happen if the others split their cars, if we pit Lewis we could come out behind Kimi Raikkonen or behind Max Verstappen and while that thinking loop did no distract us, we spent too much time on it."

Wolff said Vowles' radio call was partly to reassure Hamilton the error wasn't his and to motivate him to push on in the race, rather than dwell on the outcome.

"For Lewis he was leading the race comfortably, and then being in P4, it was a moment where he was really suffering. We thought it wasn't all over, and we wanted to recover the maximum points. We were all in pain at the mistake we made. James coming on to the radio [to apologise] is our mindest.

"We are able to say we made a mistake in order to close the matter, and give Lewis the piece of mind and make him park the thought," he added.

"It was about extracting what was left of the performance in him and helping him out of the mindset of 'how can this of possibly have happened?' By admitting the mistake [isn't his] it is easier to get out of the spiral."

Wolff commended Vowles' for admitting the error during the race. 

"James is one of the best ever and it needs guts to comes out and apologise in order to save the best possible result and go out there in front of millions of people and say 'that was my mistake now you can still do this with the car you have'."