Mercedes explains why it had to "accept we made a mistake"

Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott has conceded the team had to accept and fix its strategic error with Lewis Hamilton in Hungary quickly as the cost of remaining on intermediate tyres would have been too great.

The field left the pit lane after a red flag period for the lap one carnage on intermediate tyres but with the track sufficiently dried, all cars but Hamilton pitted for slicks.

When Hamilton pitted a lap later he rejoined last but was able to fight back to third by the chequered flag, although Sebastian Vettel's disqualification promoted the Mercedes to second.

Former F1 champion Damon Hill had questioned why Hamilton needed to pit instantly, with Elliott explaining the team had to take its medicine for the previous error.

“The easy answer to that is, what we were doing is looking at the gap between Lewis and the cars behind," said Elliott.

"We were looking at how quick that gap was closing. We could see the cars on slick tyres had a pace advantage and if we had left Lewis out longer, all we would have ended up finding is we were even further behind as we did going for the pit stop.

"The other thing was that in those conditions, if it was going to stay dry, we would have quickly started heating our Intermediate tyres and that pace would have dropped even further, sort of compounding our problems.

"So, the best thing for us to do was to accept we made a mistake and to just get on and try to rectify as quickly as we possibly could. And that is always the best tactic in mixed weather conditions.”

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