Exactly what went wrong at the Mercedes double pit stop?

Mercedes were on their way to an easy one-two victory in Bahrain when a double pit stop during the safety car went completely wrong. Andrew Shovlin of Mercedes has explained exactly what went wrong in the team's press release.

"The pitstop issues were linked to the way our radio system handles the priorities of messages which caught us out in a big way. As the safety car came out, we were calling for the crew to be ready, and for the tyres for each car to come into the pitlane."

"At the time that message was going out, another radio message for a very brief period prevented one of the key messages getting through to one set of tyre collectors. It's something that's been lurking in there and could have caught us out at any time over the past few seasons."

No one to blame at Mercedes

Shovlin emphasised that it was therefore a mistake in their system and that no individual within the team could do anything about it. They are now going to do everything they can to ensure that it does not happen again. "We've still got some work to do unpicking the issues that caused our problems at the pit stop but we have time to do that properly before the next race."