Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has admitted a series of wrong strategic decisions in Formula 1‘s British Grand Prix produced a “catastrophic” race for the team.
The German marque entered the 51-lap race at Silverstone with a chance of success following George Russell’s sublime lap to take fourth place on the grid.
Pre-race rain that rinsed the track into a greasy obstacle saw most cars start on Intermediate tyres, but as the sun appeared, some cars opted to change to slicks.
This included Russell at the end of the formation lap, which Wolff later conceded was a big mistake, but unfortunately for the team, not the last that would arise.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who started 10th, also saw his race compromised by a strategic error, being brought in to change tyres under the Virtual Safety Car.
After the race, Wolff was asked who within the team had made the calls on the pit wall, but he responded by indicating that driver and team were both responsible.
“Well, the driver is team. We’re all in this together,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“But the first call, or the first decision from within the car and the people was terribly wrong. That kind of made us spiral from bad to worse, because that triggered the stop for Kimi.
“When you see where Kimi was running, we should have simply kept him out with a split strategy and probably we would have been where Nico Hulkenberg was [third], because he was ahead of him. That’s not to diminish Nico’s driving, which from far away looked very good.
“When we had the wrong tyre on the car, because we believed the Medium wouldn’t last with us, because Friday was so bad. Another wrong decision.
“And then, obviously, the second stop was probably even more wrong than the first one, and that was basically the guillotine that fell.”
Despite retaining a sense of togetherness within the team, Wolff said that the decisions, particularly the first, caused the need for an uncomfortable debrief.
“I think all of us together had a robust chat up there and everybody acknowledges that the first decision was actually the catastrophic one.”
How Russell’s ‘contrarian’ and ‘suicidal’ second tyre gamble made matters worse
Russell was then involved in another big tyre gamble, opting to pit for slicks later in the race, despite it being described over the radio as potentially “suicidal”.
Wolff explained that the decision came out of desperation to overtake Pierre Gasly’s Alpine, and was another overambitious call which failed to pay dividends.
“I think by that stage he was stuck behind Gasly because the car’s performance was poor and he wasn’t able to pass,” he said.
“And then probably an act of being contrarian and doing something that is totally different than the others and hoping for a better outcome.”
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