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Toto Wolff has revealed that a crack in the fibre optic cable led to the breakdown in communication between the pit wall and the two Mercedes drivers. Both Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas suffered radio issues throughout the race, with a lack of data also being transmitted due to the crack.
"It was a local hardware issue," Wolff stated. "We found a crack in a fibre optic cable, that made us fly blind. Our whole comms and data systems broke down. We didn’t have any communications on the ‘Fantasy Island’ – that is the middle thing we have – and on the pit wall.
"So no radio comms, no data, no TV feed. We somehow managed to get it back occasionally – and that obviously penalised us strongly. So there were conversations at times that Lewis heard and then there were conversations he didn’t hear. A difficult one."
Mercedes crossed the line in third and fourth position after both drivers failed to get past rivals Mercedes who took home a one-two finish. Bottas let Hamilton through so the Brit could try his hand, and handed the position back when he found he was unable to get by.
Mercedes keep its lead in constructor standings, heading Ferrari by 39 points. Despite the radio issues that the team suffered during the Grand Prix, Wolff was happy to see how well the team worked together amid the communication crisis: "It was an incredible team play,” he said.
"We had lots of people in Brackley and in Brixworth who were our redundancy systems, feeding us massive amounts of information over to us on the radio. At times there were six or seven different people speaking to James [Vowles, Mercedes strategist] and we were trying to make the right decisions. That was a really great team effort."
Fergal Walsh
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