Video: Mercedes to tweat their “magic brake”

Lewis Hamilton held himself responsible for his restart error in Baku – but Mercedes’ technical director Mike Elliott said the team share some of the blame and will make changes to their system for the next race.

The system, which Mercedes call ‘brake magic’, is normally only used during Safety Car periods.

“Lewis had done all the right things,” said Elliott. “He got the car to the grid, he switched off the various buttons and settings he needed to switch off, switched on the ones he needed to switch on, it was all set to start the race properly.

“He made a fantastic start, he got himself up alongside Perez and as he and Perez were sort of shuffling position Lewis swerved and in the process of swerving he just clipped the magic button and unfortunately he didn’t feel he had done it.

“So he had completely no awareness he was going to have a problem.”

Although Hamilton took the blame for the error, Elliott said the team would review its practices to make it harder to replicate in future.

“I know, speaking to Lewis, that Lewis sort of feels a chunk of blame for that,” Elliot said. “But the reality is Lewis makes so few mistakes and that’s what really sets him apart from some of the other drivers.

“It’s our duty to try and give him a car where it’s more difficult for him to make mistakes. We need to take our share of that, look at how we can improve that and that’s something we will put in place for the next race.”