Nico Rosberg's punctured lef-rear tyre in the Hungarian GP

Mercedes have explained the "very unlucky" situation which led to Nico Rosberg taking the slower tyre for the dramatic conclusion to the Hungarian GP.

In what proved the most thrilling race of the season, dominant championship leaders Mercedes were on the back foot from the moment the lights went out as they were overtaken by the fast-starting Ferraris.

With Lewis Hamilton falling down the order after running off the road on lap one, and Rosberg struggling for pace with an unbalanced W06, Sebastian Vettel was over 20 seconds ahead of the lead Mercedes before the field was neutralised by the Virtual Safety Car which followed Nico Hulkenberg’s crash.

It then became a full Safety Car, which wiped out Ferrari’s lead.

Unlike the two Ferraris and team-mate Hamilton, Rosberg had already made the mandatory switch to the slower medium tyres for the second stint – meaning he could have taken to the soft tyres at his final pitstop and had a big pace and grip advantage when the race was restarted.

However, when he pitted just moments after the VSC was deployed, Mercedes’ crew instead fitted another set of medium tyres for the closing laps.

And, as it turned out amid a thrilling and incident-filled conclusion to the race, rather than challenging Vettel for the win, Rosberg came under attack from the soft tyre-shod Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo. The two eventually collided and Rosberg finished eighth after suffering a punctured tyre.

Mercedes' Nico Rosberg analyses his race after finishing 8th in Hungary. Mercedes' Nico Rosberg analyses his race after finishing 8th in Hungary.

Asked why Mercedes hadn’t switched Rosberg to the quicker compound and gone on the attack, team chief Toto Wolff explained that only the medium tyres had been prepared in the garage at the time as they were still one lap away from being confident they could get to the end on softs.

"It was a very, very unlucky situation," the Mercedes executive director said.

"What you do is you put a tyre under the pod to heat it [in the garage] as an alternative if you break a wing or have an accident – the car comes in and you put the tyre on.

"Because it was 27 or 28 laps to the end the prime [medium] tyre was still under the pod. The Virtual Safety Car came out, he was two corners before the pit, entered into the pit because we called him in and the only tyre available was the hard one.

"If he would have done the lap under the Virtual Safety Car then that lap we would have switched from the prime to the option as the final tyre."

With Ricciardo involved in incidents with both their cars, Mercedes failed to finish on the podium for the first time since the dawn of F1’s present turbo era. Their run of 28 consecutive top-three finishes is the second longest in the sport’s history.

Ted Kravitz brings you all the latest news following the Hungarian Grand Prix. Ted Kravitz brings you all the latest news following the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Wolff acknowledged the chance of a ninth victory in 10 races this term had slipped through the champions’ grasp.

"Without this very unlucky situation, with putting the wrong tyre onto the car, Nico could probably have won the race on the option tyre behind Vettel," he added.

Approaching the second stops, but before Hulkenberg's crash changed the face of the race, Rosberg was heard urging his engineer over the radio to keep him on the medium tyre for the final stint.

Wolff, however, has made clear that Rosberg would have been given the soft had the Safety Car not forced them to bring forward his final stop.

"We didn’t consider that [Rosberg's request]. In hindsight, had the right tyre been under the heater probably that would have been a race to win," he admitted.

Don’t miss the F1 Midweek Report for all the analysis of the Hungarian GP. Reuters F1 correspondent Alan Baldwin and The Daily Telegraph’s Daniel Johnson join Natalie Pinkham in the studio. Catch it at 8:30pm on Wednesday July 29 on Sky Sports F1.