Mercedes: 'Normally Hamilton takes the blame, now the team has to do it'

In Monza, Mercedes seemed to drive for a long time to a simple 1-2. In qualifying they were dominant and the expectation was that it was going to be a short race in which Mercedes got the top two places. However, it went completely different. Due to a bad start from Valtteri Bottas and a penalty from Lewis Hamilton, the German team only finished fifth and seventh.

After the race there were many discussions about Mercedes and their decision to stop Hamilton while the pitlane was closed. According to James Vowles, it is not the fault of the Briton that Mercedes made a stop when it was not allowed to. "If you look at the footage from his car, you can see that there are only two signs indicating that the pit lane is closed. It was difficult for him to see them", he explains in the Mercedes debrief.

Team must take responsibility

"Nowhere else was there any indication for Lewis that the pit lane was closed". According to Vowles, the team did get an indication of that. "We got a message on one of our screens right away, but you don't look at it right away. The focus was mainly on making the pit stop. You don't look at a single sentence that says that the pitlane is closed."

Andres Shovlin says it's not Hamilton's fault, but the team has to learn from this mistake. "Lewis is not the person to notice this, we should have been at the pit wall. The team should take responsibility for this, not Lewis. That is his way of working, every time something goes wrong he takes the blame. The problem this time, however, was with the team," Shovlin concluded.