Toto: No one will be lose job over Lewis pit call

Toto Wolff has said that no one at Mercedes will lose their job over the strategy call the Monaco GP that cost Lewis Hamilton a seemingly certain victory.

As the safety car was being deployed for the accident involving Max Verstappen and Romain Grosjean, Hamilton was pitted by his Mercedes team in a decision that dropped the reigning World Champion from the lead to third place. During a Twitter Q&A with fans on social media, Wolff was asked if anybody had been sacked at the team. He replied with “Absolutely not. We’re a World Championship team and we are not playing a blame game based on a single race.”

In response to some fans questioning if the Virtual Safety Car caused Mercedes to make the call to bring in Hamilton, he said “No. The decision was made one lap later.” He added “We believed we could make a free stop to cover risk of cars behind on Super Soft. Unfortunately our data was wrong. You need the right balance between data and gut feeling. Our tools told us we had the gap but they were wrong. Under Safety Car you need 12 secs gap to maintain position. Our system showed us that we had that gap.”

As a result of the mistake by the current Constructors’ Champions, Nico Rosberg won the race, followed by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. Hamilton finished third, decreasing his points lead to just 10 points. The F1 season resumes in Canada, on the weekend of the 7th June.

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