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Lewis Hamilton beat his team-mate and polo player Valtteri Bottas for a sixth victory at Silverstone, having opted for a one-stop strategy and a long second stint in hard tires.
That, combined with a safety car before Hamilton made his first stop, allowed him to leapfrog to Bottas, who had filled up early and opted for a two-stop strategy.
Bottas thought that a one-stop shop was "out of the question" and even Hamilton admitted that he was not sure he could hold the tires hard.
Team director Toto Wolff said that strategic freedom was the result of pilot-led discussions at the team's meeting in the morning, but said he was questioning the decision to move away from the team. The team's tendency to adopt the same strategy was "a fair argument".
At the request of Motorsport.com to explain the different strategies, Mr. Wolff said: "The discussion we had with them this morning was as follows: if you put them on the same tire with the same strategy, the turn 1 or the first round would remain blocked. the result.
"And we felt that, resuming their suggestion, it would provide an interesting race. It still overlapped in many cases, we knew that they would argue, but maybe with a different strategy, that's what we tried.
"I think that after the fact, the argument has value and I think we need to look at it – do we favor somebody unconsciously? What we would not want to do.
"This has created more experience and more data so we can decide if we want to do it in the future."
Unlike Ferrari and Red Bull with Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen respectively, Mercedes chose not to make a second pit stop for Bottas under the safety car.
This forced him to make a second stop later to take a second mandatory compound, and Wolff explained that there were two arguments against switching to hard tires when the race was neutralized.
"We still were not convinced that a single window would suffice, so we counterbalanced our strategies," Wolff said.
"The other thing is that I think it would have come out behind Sebastian [Vettel]because Sebastian was running close behind him, if I'm not mistaken.
Vettel was also under the safety car but Wolff said Mercedes did not know it would happen.
"I think the call was just not to beat him, but what must be said is that Valtteri did a great race," added Wolff. "He also deserved to be a winner. Both of them deserved to be winners today. The strategy and the safety car were against him, that's bad luck. "
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