Matt Somers wrote:Some of the clutch protocols were changed, affecting Austria & Silverstone but the event notes reverted back to normal for Hungary, allowing drivers to do practice starts at the end of the pitlane. I'd assumed that the changes in Austria/Silverstone had, had a detrimental effect on Mercedes and resulted in their poor starts. Hungary must be down to the additional formation lap changing the bite point far beyond the original BPF, (I need to check the replay back to see if Nico did what he did off the grid in Silverstone, which was to do another BPF before the lights dropped..)
I suspect the whole reason that everyone was up for these changes is that Merc had found the optimal way of launching the cars from the BPF's, leaving them a little at sea since Charlie made the protocol changes in Austria.
If you look at the starts, relative to the entire field the starts weren't that bad. It's just that the two cars behind them had incredible starts (relative to the field). Could just be one of those things.