Source: Mercedes-Benz Archive

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Mercedes defend Vowles-confession during Austrian GP

Mercedes defend Vowles-confession during Austrian GP

04-07-2018 08:39
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Nicolás Quarles van Ufford

Mercedes technical director James Allison has defended fellow Mercedes-James and chief strategist James Vowles for his in-race apology towards Lewis Hamilton, as Allison thinks it's just evidence of the responsibility everybody takes at Mercedes.

After screwing up Hamilton's race tactics, in which he decided to let Hamilton stay out during a Virtual Safety Car, which cost him eight seconds and with that the first place during the race, Vowles came on the team radio and apologized to Hamilton, saying that he messed up but still urging the four-time champion the make the best of it. At that point, Hamilton was down in fourth place. He eventually retired from the race with a mechanical issue.

Red Bull boss Christian Horner was critical of the whole situation, saying that it was "unfair" to make Vowles come on the radio, but Allison defended his colleague on Pure Pitwall, a YouTube series in which someone from Mercedes answers tactical questions from fans about the past race.

“In this particular instance it was James showing an extremely broad pair of shoulders, standing up and saying ‘that was my mistake Lewis’ and I am sorry for it,” Allison said about Vowles.

“It was very characteristic of James, but also a measure of how his team operates where people will hold up their hand when they have made a mistake, knowing that the team’s attitude to mistakes is that they are things that we learn from, rather than things that we throw blame around for or cause great polemics within the team. 

“So it was a very good example of strong leadership by James trying to explain to Lewis what had happened. 

"And the importance of that message meant that James wanted to give it personally rather than pass it through the intermediary of the race engineer.”