Nico Rosberg could have been celebrating victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix had the safety car come out one lap later, according to Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.
Although Sebastian Vettel won the race at a canter in the closing stages, Wolff believes Rosberg would have had a shot at victory had he switched to the faster soft tyres for the final stint. Mercedes put the harder compound tyres on because it was forced to pit earlier than expected under the safety car to defend its position and only had medium tyres warming rather than softs in case an unscheduled pit stop was needed.
Wolff explained that Mercedes always have one set of tyres warming under a "pod" in the garage just in case they are needed for an unscheduled pit stop. But when the safety car came out it was just before Mercedes were about to swap the medium tyres in the pod for soft tyres, which was by far the quicker compound in Sunday's race.
"The procedure is that the default tyre is always the one that if you have a crash or lose your front wing then that tyre is ready," Wolff explained. "And because there was 28 or 29 laps to go, it was still the medium tyre under the pod. The crossover [from mediums to softs] is just at 27 or 26 before the end of the race, so within one lap we would have changed for the alternative. One lap later it would have been the option."
Wolff said Rosberg's pace had still been good on the mediums - or prime as it is known - but he came under attack from Ricciardo on the soft - known as the option - which ultimately resulted in the collision that caused his puncture.
"You could see that on the prime we were looking okay, even on Nico's car, and had it not been for this very unlucky situation with putting the wrong tyre onto the car, Nico could probably won the race on the option tyre behind Vettel. We didn't exploit that opportunity because it was just on the crossover between the hard and the soft."
Rosberg had been significantly slower than team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the middle stint and Wolff said Mercedes was still trying to get to the bottom of the issue.
"We had a problem with Nico's car since yesterday and it was such a pace differential between the two cars we need to find out why that was. You could even see the understeer in pictures."
Rosberg added: "I don't have an explanation [for the lack of pace]. For sure on the prime the pace was a lot better compared to the Ferrari, but on the option they were quick. My balance was also wrong, but that's just a repercussion of having the balance so wrong in qualifying and trying to get it right for the race, but I went to far in the other direction with the front wing."