Mercedes boss Toto Wolff
says that a simple stopwatch failure was the reason why Nico Rosberg's
five-second pit penalty in Hockenheim dragged out to over eight seconds.
Rosberg was handed a five-second time penalty for forcing Max Verstappen off the track when battling for third position.
It has always been the responsibility of the team, and not the FIA, to monitor pit time penalties, and it is usually done by the team manager with a standard handheld stopwatch.
However, on this occasion when the usual process failed, the team left a safe margin to ensure that the required time had elapsed.
"Even in an F1 team with all the high tech if you get to take out the instruments you don't usually use, like a stopwatch, they can fail," said Wolff.
"The stopwatch didn't start properly, and once we realised, we had to take it safe. And this is why it took longer than normal."
Wolff said it was not a human error: "It was a stopwatch failure. The damn thing failed, it didn't function like it should have done.
"We could have counted, one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, but we relied on the stopwatch, and it let us down."
Meanwhile Rosberg said he didn't realise that there had been a delay until after the race, but he insisted that he was not annoyed by it.
“At the time it wasn’t frustrating, because I didn’t know," said the German. "It felt like I was sitting there forever.
"Now in hindsight, not that frustrating either, because there were so many things went wrong today, and that was one more small thing, which actually didn’t make a difference in the end.
"I wouldn’t have been able to get the Red Bulls anyway, because they were on the supersofts, and they lasted pretty well in that stint, so that didn’t make a difference.”
It has always been the responsibility of the team, and not the FIA, to monitor pit time penalties, and it is usually done by the team manager with a standard handheld stopwatch.
However, on this occasion when the usual process failed, the team left a safe margin to ensure that the required time had elapsed.
"Even in an F1 team with all the high tech if you get to take out the instruments you don't usually use, like a stopwatch, they can fail," said Wolff.
"The stopwatch didn't start properly, and once we realised, we had to take it safe. And this is why it took longer than normal."
Wolff said it was not a human error: "It was a stopwatch failure. The damn thing failed, it didn't function like it should have done.
"We could have counted, one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, but we relied on the stopwatch, and it let us down."
Meanwhile Rosberg said he didn't realise that there had been a delay until after the race, but he insisted that he was not annoyed by it.
“At the time it wasn’t frustrating, because I didn’t know," said the German. "It felt like I was sitting there forever.
"Now in hindsight, not that frustrating either, because there were so many things went wrong today, and that was one more small thing, which actually didn’t make a difference in the end.
"I wouldn’t have been able to get the Red Bulls anyway, because they were on the supersofts, and they lasted pretty well in that stint, so that didn’t make a difference.”
Rosberg surprised by penalty for Verstappen move
Nico Rosberg says it will take some time to come to terms with "losing" today’s German GP – and says he was shocked to receive a penalty after passing Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.
Rosberg dropped to fourth after making a poor start from pole, and was further delayed when he was later penalised 5s for forcing Verstappen off the track while passing him.After finishing fourth, he has now fallen 19 points behind race winner Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ championship.
“Nineteen points is not tough at all, tough is losing the race in the way I did today,” said Rosberg. “That’s very tough, and it’s going to take some time to digest in the coming days.
“I was very surprised that I got penalised, I didn’t expect that at all,” added Rosberg, who was delayed even further when he was held for 8.2s instead of 5s in his pitstop. “It’s just one more of those things when your day goes completely wrong.
“All those things come together, but I don’t think it made a difference in the end. I couldn’t have challenged the Red Bulls I think anyways after that penalty.”
When asked about the pace of the Red Bulls, Rosberg replied: “Without the penalty I was in front of them, so the penalty cost me dearly, definitely.
“They were running on a good pace, yes. We are keeping an eye on them.”
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