Mercedes fully behind strategist Vowles despite bad call

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has offered his full support to James Vowles after the Silver Arrows strategist fumbled a crucial call in Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix.

Mercedes decided not to bring in Lewis Hamilton when a virtual safety car was deployed following the retirement of the team's other driver, Valtteri Bottas.

The strategy call proved costly to Hamilton who was informed shortly after that he would have to make up eight seconds of time to compensate for the blunder.

Feeling his race had been lost and expressing as much on the radio, Hamilton was urged to press on, with Vowles taking the blame for the decision.

• Wolff: 'The most painful day in my years at Mercedes'

"I have thrown away the win today. I'm sorry," said the Mercedes engineer.

"Give us what you can. We trust you and believe in you," he later added.

Wolff, who said the day had been his most painful ever as Mercedes' boss, praised Vowles however for having the guts to publicly admit his mistake.

"For me, James is one of the best ever, and it needs guts to come out and in order to save the best possible result go out there and say in front of millions of people and say, 'That was my mistake, now you can still do this, with the car you have'," Wolff said.

"We don't need to make changes," he insisted.

"The most important thing is to understand why an error happens, and go back into the situation and analyse it.

"I don't think that we would make an error twice. It's just that the situation is very complex, we are fighting [between] six cars and it's just a tough situation."

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