Mercedes admitted surprise at Lewis Hamilton setting the fastest lap on the final lap at the British Grand Prix.
After teammate Valtteri Bottas had stopped for softs in the final 10 laps, it was seen as a foregone conclusion that he would take the additional point on offer when he duly set a new lap record.
His teammate though had other ideas and would beat the Finn to take the full 26 points on offer despite running old hard compound rubber.
“We’re always talking about tyres that don’t last and all those kind of things but it was really cool to still have tyres left at the end,” said Hamilton.
“Basically, it was like a qualifying lap – it was the qualifying lap that I was supposed to do [on Saturday], better late than never.”
“It was awesome. There’s no better way to finish a race just on the edge of your seat, and it was definitely the best last lap that I’ve ever had.”
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The reaction from his team was bewilderment that the lap time he produced, a 1m 27.369s, was even possible at that point.
“There’s a funny context to that because since we have these new regulations with points for fastest lap, the engineers are showing on the Sunday morning briefing that it makes no point to go for fastest lap, there’s too much risk,” team boss Toto Wolff explained.
“You can see the drivers and they’re like ‘yeah whatever’ and this led to a totally absurd situation because on paper, a 32-lap old hard should never be good enough for fastest lap but they’re just able to pull it out.”
Bottas admitted his original best time on softs was hampered by not having a full battery, but even so, he was confident his time was good enough.
“I was surprised that with the hard tyre at the end he [Hamilton] could do a lap like that,” he admitted.
“The hard tyre was very solid. There was not much I had: A bit of a lock-up into the last couple of corners so lost maybe a tenth there.”