Mercedes: "Software Bug" Caused Mistake

The team had looked to be favourites for the win until a mistake under the virtual safety car cost the team big time.

It was a race win thrown away by Mercedes as an error apparently caused by a software bug meant that Sebastian Vettel jumped Lewis Hamilton by making his pitstop under the VSC to take the victory in the first race of the season.

Speaking to the BBC, Mercedes Boss Toto Wolff said that the team had already begun looking at what had gone wrong and caused the mistake.

“We don’t know yet. We thought we had enough margin to beat Sebastian but then we saw the TV pictures and it wasn’t enough. So I think it must have been a software bug somewhere within our systems that got it wrong.”

“It’s always very painful when you’re in control of a race and you lose and you don’t understand why,” Wolff said. “That rarely happens in the data world of Formula One. But we are digging deep now to understand where we could have had a problem.”

Hamilton had been comfortable up to that point and would have resumed the lead of the race had Vettel made his stop under normal racing conditions. The reigning world champion fought hard to get back past but a mistake on lap 48 ended any hopes he had of retaking the lead.