Mercedes have apologised to driver Lewis Hamilton after a strategy error cost the two-time world champion a second Monaco Grand Prix win on Sunday.
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Hamilton lead the race from the beginning, however he was called in by his team to put on a fresh set of tyres under safety car conditions with 14 laps remaining.
It was a massive miscalculation by Mercedes, with Hamilton exiting pit lane in third place.
Mercedes non-executive chairman Niki Lauda said it was a major error made by the team and that he had apologised to Hamilton straight after the race.
“It was a mistake by the team,” Lauda is quoted as saying by Reuters.
“Lewis said he was not happy with the tires and they over-reacted completely wrong and called him in. There was no need, no reason. It was simply a mistake.
“They over-reacted 10 laps before the end, in Monaco. Where you can’t pass anyway…we destroyed his race. I apologized already.”
Hamilton cut a visibly disappointed figure on the podium, and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said his team had simply got it wrong.
“What the hell happened there? That’s exactly the right question,” he said.
“The simple answer is we got the maths wrong. The calculation wrong. We thought we had a gap which we didn’t have when the safety car came out.”
The strategy call handed the race win to Nico Rosberg, with Sebastian Vettel crossing the line in second place.
Hamilton now leads the world championship by just 10 points over Rosberg, with the next round to be held in Montreal, Canada.
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