Mercedes apologizes: 'Although it's not much by way of consolation'

Valtteri Bottas made a big mistake in the first corner of the Hungarian Grand Prix, which prevented several drivers from continuing. The Finn also had to stop the race. Andrew Shovlin apologized for the incident afterwards.

"For us it wasn't a very tidy day - Valtteri had a very poor start and then his mistake at turn 1 obviously ruined the day for Max, Sergio and Lando; we can only apologise for that, although it's not much by way of consolation," said Shovlin in Mercedes' press release.

The touché caused a red flag, but nobody on the grid dared to start on slicks. "Given the position we were in at the restart, we didn't particularly want to gamble on slicks but we were surprised when the entire grid left on intermediates. It was even more surprising to see them all pit on the formation lap. That is obviously one of the key moments of the race for us, although we wouldn't have been leading on the restart as having the first garage means the field coming in behind us prevents us from leaving our pit box," explained the top executive.

Hamilton eventually crossed the finish line in third place."It's such a difficult track to overtake on and we had to convert to the two-stop to get through but unfortunately we spent too many laps behind Fernando and that meant Lewis was only catching the leaders on the last lap. It's frustrating to have given away a chance to win here but encouraging that the car was really good - we weren't expecting to be so strong."