Nico Rosberg has slammed race engineer Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington for his strategic errors at the Dutch GP.
Red Bull’s excellent strategy saw Max Verstappen take victory at the Dutch GP. The same cannot be said for Mercedes, who messed theirs up and had to settle for the rest of the podium positions with their two drivers. This was not appreciated by the ex-Mercedes driver in Rosberg.
Mercedes and Bono asked Lewis Hamilton to pit at a bizarre time. This was also pointed out as the reason why Mercedes ended up missing out on a potential win. The second pit-stop saw Hamilton rejoin to a lot of traffic, which Verstappen had already cleared.
Rosberg disapproved of the decisions taken, and slammed Bono for the strategic errors.
“They’ve had a couple of moments, not their usual high level of strategy,” Rosberg said, as reported by GP Blog. “Something (is) going on. This evening, they’ll be some serious discussions.”
The German then started his criticism of Bono and his instructions, saying, “So unclear, should he push now or not. What is he doing?
“As a driver, this frustrates me like hell. I’m like come on, give us clear guidance. That was below par from Bono today,” he concluded.
Not good enough
Mercedes’ poor performance was duly noted by Team Principal Toto Wolff. He acknowledged the failure, and vowed the team would do better from here on out.
“We weren’t just good enough overall in the race,” Wolff said.
“Pace- wise, we would’ve been there, but when you’re second on the row, you’re always the loser.”
Mercedes need to step up to the plate, or risk being left behind by Red Bull. The triple header comes to a close with the Italian GP this weekend. They will need to claw back the deficit at Monza, and will be looking to do it in every way possible.
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