Mercedes accused of making bizarre choice: 'A death blow to their chances'

19:48, 08 Jul

byNorberto Mujica

Mercedes could have scored a better result at Silverstone. The fact that they didn't lands on the Brackley-based team's choices since the start of the race.

Gary Anderson, former Jordan Racing top man, looks to Mercedes' strange decision to pit George Russell at the end of the formation lap in his column for The Telegraph.

Mercedes' bizarre choices exposed

"Mercedes, too, made some strange choices. The strangest was bringing George Russell in at the end of the formation lap."

The German team seemed to bank on the track drying quickly and thus getting the jump on the front-runners McLaren and Red Bull.

Anderson brings up the German team's tyre choice as well as the weather data the other teams up and down the pitlane had at their disposail.

"In particular the hard slicks rather than the mediums or softs. Every team seemed to think that it was going to rain 10 or so laps into the race so Mercedes were taking a big risk."

"It ended up putting them on the back foot as, inevitably, Russell had to switch to intermediates when the rain returned. He never got back into contention," judged the Irishman.

Mercedes didn't need a miracle, until the rain hit

The decision is harder to understand , according to the former F1 top man, given Russell's starting P4 position. "If Russell had started towards the back of the grid you could understand it more. He started fourth though and was in contention at the start, alongside the McLarens, Red Bull and Ferraris."

For Anderson, if the premature tyre change was to take place at all, the compound should have then been different.

"In any case, the soft slick should have been the choice, not the hards. The soft gives you more grip in the wet and the dry and is quicker to get up to temperature than the hard tyre."

"The extra wear that it would suffer in damp, cold conditions is negligible, relative to the hard or medium."

"I think Mercedes were looking for the miracle from lap one, but by the end of the 12th lap a miracle is exactly what they needed," concluded Anderson.