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For those of you that missed this.
Toto Wolff summed up the last Grand Prix for Mercedes on live Tv calling it a colossal f up. The Sky interviewers were wearing their masks so it was hard to see their reactions and Toto quickly apologised. That was real though and described what had just transpired perfectly.
This is the drivers on board communications with their chief mechanics regarding the pit stop and Valterri is priceless. Definitely worth a listen and I found it quite funny.
The race was thrown into disarray when the Williams car crashed on the main straight bringing out the safety car. This gave Mercedes who were winning the race to bring both cars in to change tyres. What happened was there was a radio failure and Bottas's tyres were put on Russell's Mercedes leaving Bottas with nothing. Actually they fitted two of Bottas tyres on the front of Russell's Mercedeswhich is illegal and were fined $20 000 for this act. By the time Bottas who was double stacked behind Russel came for his tyres there was confusion and eventually after wasting 10 seconds they put the same tyres he drove in with back on killing any chance he had.
We have never seen this happen with the German outfit before as they are just that organised. It just goes to show perfection is hard to maintain and anything is possible. Radio failure in the garage between the mechanics was the culprit and something they need to learn from and improve. The race was theirs and they lost it not once, but twice on the night.
Russell who had Bottas's tyres then suffered a puncture and was called in for another set of tyres and his race was gone. He had done astonishingly well up until that point and it was a cruel bit of luck that robbed him off a certain maiden victory.
Hamilton is expected to be back this weekend so Russell will have to make do with driving the Williams. This must have been a wake up call for Bottas though as he never stepped up and was lucky to finish ahead of Russell in the end. The tyre incident wasn't his fault and who knows if they had given him a new set of shoes he possibly could have won the race. This is something we will never know as Perez went on to win his maiden Grand Prix after 190 starts.
It was refreshing to see new faces on the podium and the race had increased television viewership with the interest around Russell driving the Mercedes. Next season we have Mick Schumacher driving for Haas so the German audience should sky rocket again. Funny that the current German broadcaster cut ties at the end of this season and now this happens.
The last race of the season is this weekend and think that everyone involved has managed to keep the show on the road is quite incredible. Not in our wildest dreams did we expect to witness 17 races back in June when all looked lost.