Mercedes have confessed they made a mistake in overruling George Russell during their pivotal pit decision at the Brazilian Grand Prix. Russell had an excellent start to the race, overtaking pole-sitter Lando Norris to take the lead.

He maintained this position in the early stages of the race, with overtaking proving challenging on the wet and treacherous Interlagos track. However, as the rain intensified, their race began to fall apart.

Russell, feeling the grip levels deteriorating significantly on the track, predicted that unless the rain eased, the race would likely be halted for safety reasons. Based on this intuition, he suggested to the Mercedes strategists that he should remain on the track rather than pitting for new tyres.

Despite his advice, he was overruled and race engineer Marcus Dudley instructed the Brit to stop. Shortly after, Franco Colapinto crashed his Williams and the red flags were raised.

The damage was done, however, and Russell found himself in fourth place, behind the two Alpine cars and Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, who had decided to take a gamble. Upon hearing about the red flag over the radio, Russell lost his cool, exclaiming: “F***! ” he shouted, adding: “I f***ing said it, should have stayed out.”

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has since admitted that the team should have heeded their driver’s advice.

In a revealing video analysis, the team strategist said: “With hindsight, you would manage most races differently but, certainly, in this case, we would have done. One of the key things is once they announced that the Virtual Safety Car was ending, we had a very, very short window, only a second or two, where we could have got George to stay out on track.

“The reason you would have done that is by that point, you are going to suffer a full pit loss anyway. You may as well stay out and just gamble on the fact that it was quite likely someone would have a crash, as happened, and that they are forced to red-flag it.

“Prior to that, stopping to us made sense, because given that Lando was coming in, George was able to do that. He would have still been ahead of all those cars that stayed out. But you get the benefit of fresh rubber in case they do not call it as a red flag.

“Normally, we try not to assume that there is going to be a red flag, because sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong.

“If there is a safety car and you decide to stay out, assuming a red flag, if you do not get it, you are in trouble. But obviously, the cars that did stay out, that gamble worked for them, and they ended up in prime position.”