Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes apologises to Hamilton for error

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has apologised to Lewis Hamilton for the strategic error which cost him victory in the Monaco Grand Prix.

Hamilton dominated from the front throughout the race, enjoying a lead of over 14 seconds during the closing stages of the race when Max Verstappen crashed heavily after contact with Romain Grosjean. With the safety car deployed for the incident, Hamilton pitted but saw his lead wiped out as Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel stayed on track.

Hamilton finished third as his team-mate won from Vettel, and Wolff said after the race it was a "misjudgement" by the team.

"There is nothing else to do than apologise to Lewis, it was a misjudgement in the heat of the moment," Wolff said. "I'm sorry for Lewis that we made the mistake and I'm sorry for Lewis. It should have been a perfect 1-2 today.

"We made a decision and it was the wrong decision. We need to analyse it and to apologise to Lewis."

Hamilton also revealed in the driver press conference there had been a discussion over whether to pit or not, with the team originally telling him to stay out.

"I saw a screen and it looked like the team was out, so I thought Nico had pitted," Hamilton said. "I couldn't see the guys behind so I thought the guys behind had pitted. When the team said to stay out I said that these tyres would drop in temperature and thought that these guys were going to be on options and I was on the harder tyre, so we said to pit. So with that thinking I came in with full confidence."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.