HOCKENHEIM, Germany -- A stopwatch malfunction meant Nico Rosberg was stationary for three seconds longer than necessary while serving his five-second penalty at the German Grand Prix.
Rosberg was hit with the penalty for forcing Max Verstappen off the track at Turn 6 while battling for second position. Drivers are required to serve in-race time penalties during pit stops -- with the team unable to touch the car until the penalty has elapsed -- and Mercedes served Rosberg's at his final pit stop.
However, when the car entered the pit box the stopwatch failed to start and Rosberg's total stationary time -- including the tyre change -- totaled 12 seconds.
"Even in a Formula One team with all the high tech, if you get to take out the instruments that you usually don't use like a stopwatch, they can fail and the stopwatch didn't start properly," Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff explained. "Once we realised we had to take it safe and this is why it took longer than normal.
"We could have also counted, one-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two, one-thousand-and-three ... but we relied on the stopwatch and it let us down."
Although Rosberg would have lost track position to the Red Bulls regardless of the time lost due to the stopwatch failure, he would have resumed closer to Verstappen in the final stint.
"At the time it wasn't frustrating because I didn't know," Rosberg said. "It just felt like I was sitting there forever. Now in hindsight, it's not that frustrating either.
"There were so many things that went wrong today that it was just one more small thing that actually didn't make a difference in the end because I wouldn't have been able to get the Red Bulls anyway. They were on the super-softs and they lasted quite well in that last stint, so that didn't make a difference."