Mercedes Formula One team boss Toto Wolff has admitted that the team must learn from what happened in Hungary.
Despite declaring that both Mercedes drivers are clear to battle and race for the 2014 Formula One World Championship, Lewis Hamilton was instructed to move over and allow team-mate and championship leader Nico Rosberg to overtake him.
The reasoning behind the decision was because the two drivers were on different tyre strategies.
If Rosberg was able to get beyond Hamilton, race simulations probably showed that Rosberg could have gone on to win the race on that tyre strategy.
But for Hamilton that would have seen the gap in the championship extended from the 14 points at the start of the weekend to probably around the 27 point mark.
Instead with Hamilton beating Rosberg on track, the Brit closed the gap slightly to 11 points.
‘I would have lost points to Nico if I had let him past when they asked me, he would have beaten me. So I’m not quite sure what the situation was there. I don’t want to comment, I’ll go and speak to everyone and give them the benefit of the doubt, I’m sure it was for the right reasons perhaps,’ Hamilton told Sky Sports.
Speaking to the BBC he added: ‘He didn’t get close enough to overtake, I was not going to lift off and lose ground to Fernando [Alonso] or Daniel [Ricciardo], so it was a bit strange.
After the race, also speaking to the BBC, Wolff all but admitted that with the benefit of hindsight Mercedes order to Hamilton was wrong.
‘We will not have that situation again because we will try to learn.
‘We cannot expect the drivers in the second half of the season to move over for their main competitor.’ he said.
‘We need to analyse how we ended up there and we need to again discuss the racing between the two, It is getting intense.’
‘You let your team-mate by and he wins and you lose another eight or 10 points, you damage your own campaign.
‘Once it is properly analysed, the emotion will disappear. [Hamilton] wears his heart on his sleeve and this is how he is. It is clear that having had that call is not what you expect when the car has broken down [in qualifying].’
