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Mercedes boss Toto Wolff claims Ferrari's decision to pit for hard tires for the third stint of the race was what cost the team a potential win. Speaking about pit strategies for the race, Wolff said that Mercedes had trialed the hard tire on Friday, but immediately discarded it. The Mercedes boss felt that choosing the hard tire was what cost Ferrari the win.
"Yeah, we broke the hard tyres on Friday and it was a total 'no no, can't do that'. That's why we kept the medium for the race, and that was the race-winning strategy and I guess that's what cost Ferrari the win."
Wolff also took solace from the fact that Mercedes looked good on Friday and were able to perform on Saturday and Sunday. At the same time, though, the Mercedes boss admitted that there was a possibility of an even better result if Lewis Hamilton had not suffered the DRS issue in Q3.
"At the beginning, it looked a little bit like we were in the race, but it was still a long shot for us to win. We were second and third on the road today and, who knows, if Lewis would have started at the front it would have been a fun battle."
Mercedes boss: We need to stay humble despite the result
Toto Wolff also touched on the spectacular pole position scored by George Russell on Saturday and was happy that the young driver got that one out of the way. Having said that, the team boss also cautioned against complacency as the team had still not achieved the outright goal of being the fastest on the grid.
"George had a great qualifying session with pole and drove a solid race. He was in the fight, utilising the tyres, but ran out of them in the second stint. Lewis' fight today was unbelievable. Budapest continues to be a success story for him. He came out of nowhere and was quicker than everyone else."
"Today, we had good pace, but we need to stay humble and look at race weekend after race weekend so we can try to gain more learnings and experiment to put us in a situation where we can actually fight for wins at the end of the season."
The German outfit now has two consecutive double podiums and is starting to ramp things up in the championship.
