Mercedes boss Toto Wolff reckons his team had the quicker race package at the French Grand Prix but underestimated the power of the undercut.
Lewis Hamilton took the lead on the opening lap when Max Verstappen went wide at Turn 1 but the Red Bull driver vaulted back ahead through the first round of stops.
Verstappen then opted for a two-stop strategy, prompting Mercedes to leave Hamilton out on a sole stop approach, and the Red Bull driver re-took the lead on the penultimate lap.
“Car performance was good, I think we had the quicker car probably,” said Wolff.
“We lost the race at the stop, thinking that we had enough protection against the undercut, which we didn’t.
“We had a solid three-second gap to protect against the undercut and that wasn’t enough as it looks and from there on we were on the back foot actually.
“The fight between the three cars was intense at the front and I think you then basically had to opt to continue with the one stop or the two.
“The two stop was a danger for us because [Sergio] Perez was in the way, and we got it wrong today.”
Mercedes triggered the first round of stops with Valtteri Bottas, then running third, prompting Verstappen to come in next time around – in order to avoid being undercut.
Mercedes explained that it brought in Bottas first in the wake of the Finn locking up and running wide through Turn 4.
“We had a good opportunity to win and get both cars on the podium so the result is obviously very disappointing,” said Mercedes engineering chief Andrew Shovlin.
“Lewis had control of the race in the first stint and if anything we looked to be a bit better on degradation.
“We triggered the stops ourselves with Valtteri who was struggling with a growing vibration and that was clearly earlier than we wanted to come in but it was getting to a level where we didn’t have an option.
“Max obviously took the next lap to protect against Valtteri but with Lewis having just over three seconds of margin, we thought that he would have just enough protection from the undercut but that wasn’t the case.
“The pitstops were good, the hard tyre was obviously quick but there’s more that we need to go through to understand why we lost the place.”
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