Mercedes defend Vowles after Austria mistake

Mercedes technical director James Allison says that the admission by chief strategist James Vowles during the Austrian Grand Prix is a sign of strength and displays the healthy nature of the Mercedes F1 team environment.

It was under the virtual safety car that Lewis Hamilton effectively lost the Austrian Grand Prix after his Mercedes team failed to pit him whilst their rivals all took advantage of the situation.

Vowles came over team radio mid-race to apologise to Hamilton for the blunder and to remotivate his driver.

A week on from the disappointment, Allison praised Vowles in a YouTube video from Mercedes saying that his apology was an example of strong leadership within the team.

"The normal communication path is that the strategist will tell a message to the race engineer to pass on to the driver and the race engineer will do that. Sometimes you want to avoid the Chinese whisper of that or the message is very important or, in this particular instance, it was extremely personal.

"In this particular instance it was James showing an extremely broad pair of shoulders, standing up and saying 'that's my mistake, Lewis, and I'm very sorry for it'.

I think that's characteristic of James but also a measure of how this team operates, where people will hold up a hand when they have made a mistake knowing that the team's attitude to mistakes is that they are things that they learn from rather than throw blame around for or cause great polemics within the team.

"It was a great example of strong leadership by James, trying to explain to Lewis what had happened. The importance of that message meant James wanted to give it personally rather than passing it through the intermediary of a race engineer."