Last weekend’s British GPs' last lap have been the center of discussion for this week and today Mecedes's chief strategist James Vowles finally explained circumstances leading towards the failure of Bottas's and Lewis's tyre deflation in the end stages of the race.

Some people pointed towards the DAS being responsible for the failure but James Vowles completely ruled it out as it was never used during that time period and Sainz also suffered the same damage to the tyres.

“I can categorically say the answer is no. There are a few reasons behind that.

“First of all, it wasn’t used any time really towards the element of the failure. In fact, it was used really towards the early stages of the race and that’s it.

“Next, [Carlos] Sainz also experienced a failure and clearly, they are not using a DAS system on their car and a number of other competitors complained of the vibration that Valtteri was.

So, what else led to those circumstances that denied Mercedes a comfortable 1-2, As from the beginning according to James Vowels the two stop strategy was never an option because fastest two stopper was medium-hard-medium, but unfortunately both Lewis and Bottas weren't left with any medium compound tyres, other than the tyres they were starting the race on.

              "Going back to qualifying. both Max and us lost some of our tyres due to cuts and gravels, in case of Bottas his rear right tyre on his run on mediums was damaged sufficiently, that we weren't allowed to race on so, we had to run medium from his second allocation, max had the similar case with his rear and Hamilton lost his all tyres due to spin (Q2)"

              "Hard was actually the fastest of all tyres available to us so that’s what made proposition of two stop all the more difficult"

This only meant that only strategy Mercedes was left for the both drivers was one stopper (medium-hard) as going on softs on Silverstone race track would have meant a pitstop only after a few laps into the stint. Unfortunate as they were, one stopper was also heavily compromised because of an early safety car and subsequently team was forced to do a Pitstop earlier than planned.

But even though the team had to push those tyres to a much longer stint that it was planned but there were no alarm bells there was no drop in the pace of tyres and no vibration felt by the drivers or noticed in the data. some minor vibrations were felt by Bottas on lap 40 but they weren't significant enough for the team to ring any alarm bells and warrant to rethink of strategy re-plan.

"But in no time those vibrations were a worry and in the case of Lewis those vibrations didn't exist, with Valterri the vibrations were to point that they were frustrating him but not the point where he was losing amount of performance" said James in the Debrief.

So, from teams point of view as race was wrapping up all drivers had to was bring the car home safely as nothing on the telemetry looked suspicious or there was any on track battle was going as Lewis was safely ahead of Bottas and similarly Bottas had good buffer on Max.

But then came the time when Kimi went off the track at turn 11,12 and 13 and spread debris on the side of those turns as both Lewis and Bottas were about to lap Kimi, they passed through the debris immediately. But instantly there were no signs of puncture or cuts and loss of tyre pressure was seen on the data. But soon after Bottas suffered an instant puncture and at the worst moment of the lap (right after he passed the Pitlane entry). Lewis a lap later suffered the same consequence but to his luck Max just took pitstop partly precautionary partly to the greed of fastest lap point.

''Kimi went off the track as we went through the section Turn 11,12 and three and put debris on the side of it"

"Both of our drivers went through it but there were no systems that flanked up to let us know that there were any cuts or punctures at that stage"

Furthermore, James explained after Bottas' failure stopping Lewis for the new set of softs was never an option and would have meant handing over the victory Max and Redbull.

“If we he had stayed out and we had stopped and dropped behind, I’m fairly sure Redbull would have stayed out”

But how team is going to avoid similar result this weekend remains a question and with Pirelli going for a much softer tyre compound it will be even more challenging. But team James emphasized the team will have the data and those troubles won’t repeat themselves.

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