Aggressive tyre strategy sees Mercedes leave Silverstone with just one point.
With Kimi Antonelli starting tenth due to his Red Bull Ring penalty, the German team opted to start him on Inters, while teammate George Russell, at his own behest, pitted at the end of the formation lap for hards. Two laps into the race, anticipating that conditions would improve Antonelli was also brought in for slicks (hards).
Both decisions were to prove disastrous as the team’s day went from bad to worse.
“The driver is team,” said Toto Wolff at race end. “We’re all in this together.
“The first call, or the first decision from within the car and the people was terribly wrong,” admitted the Austrian of Russell’s early switch to slicks. “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, because he was ahead of him. That’s not to diminish Nico’s driving, which from far away looked very good.”
Subsequently pitting Russell for Inters, late in the race the team switched him to hards… which was to prove another disastrous call.
“We had the wrong tyre on the car, because we believed the medium wouldn’t last with us, because Friday was so bad,” said Wolff, “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.
“All of us together had a robust chat up there and everybody acknowledges that the first decision was actually the catastrophic one.”
“I think pitting at the beginning was not a stupid decision,” insisted Russell, “because it was dry for 25 minutes. What we didn’t know is it would be 15 minutes of virtual safety car.
“When the virtual safety car ended, we had five seconds pace advantage over the guys on the Inters. If only we had the whole stint of this, maybe we would have got back into the lead. But when it rains, it pours, and everything just went against us.
“In that position, if you play it safe, you’ll come home with a safe result. Of course, that would have probably been P4. Standing here now, do I wish I had P4? Of course. We wanted to be bold; we wanted to be brave. We went for some bold decisions and ultimately it bit.”
“By that stage he was stuck behind Gasly because the car’s performance was poor and he wasn’t able to pass,” insisted Wolff. “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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