Mercedes: "We wanted to give Valtteri something else, but there was a problem"

During the race Bottas specifically asked his engineer if he could be put on the opposite tyre from Hamilton. James Vowles, chief strategist on the team, explains why this didn't happen in an interview on YouTube. "Around lap 30 both cars were on the medium tire. We expected to have to stop one more time before the end of the race. During laps 29 and 30 we noticed a vibration in the front tyres of Valtteri. It got worse and worse".

"Like Silverstone"

"It was like what we saw at Silverstone, so this time we wanted to avoid anything going wrong", Vowles continues. "The result was that we brought in Valtteri first, not Lewis. Normally Lewis was preferable because he drove at the front. We looked at which tyre was best in that circumstance".

"Given that the degradation of the medium was higher than expected, that this stint was a bit shorter than we actually wanted and that we had a head start on the rest of the grid, we opted for the hard tyre. We wanted to do something different for Valtteri, but this was not a planned stop. This was a response to a problem and therefore we opted for the safe solution", the team explains.