Mercedes shed light on Lewis Hamilton failure as Brit left fuming at Toto Wolff’s team | F1 | Sport
Mercedes have explained the strategy decision that left Lewis Hamilton fuming at the Singapore Grand Prix. The Brit qualified third on the grid but crossed the line down in sixth place after his team opted for an unconventional tyre selection.
With Mercedes failing to demonstrate the raw pace needed to beat second-placed Max Verstappen over a race distance, the Silver Arrows started Hamilton on soft-compound tyres with the hope of pipping the Dutchman to Turn One and gaining track position.
This plan didn’t work out, and Hamilton quickly started to struggle with tyre temperatures, forcing Mercedes’ strategists to bring him in early. This set up a long stint on hard tyres, and the seven-time world champion was eventually overcut by George Russell, Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc.
Offering a look at Mercedes’ thought process behind the strategy, technical director James Allison explained: “We shouldn’t have started on the softs, that was a mistake. If we could turn back time, we would do what those around us did and select the mediums.”
He continued: “The reasoning was that the soft often allows you to get away from the start abruptly and allows you a good chance of jumping a place or two in the opening laps of the race.
“We had no real expectation before the race that we were going to suffer the sorts of difficulties that we then experienced on the soft rubber. We imagined we would get the upside of the soft rubber of getting a place or two. We didn’t, because that just isn’t the way the starts played out.”
He later added: “So we didn’t get the places at the start, the pace started to build up from around about lap five. And that left Lewis with a car that was not particularly happy anyway, suffering from quite poor tyre degradation and needing to come in early as a consequence and really ruined his race for him. So just a clear mistake.”
Allison’s explanation will do little to appease Hamilton, who was fuming with the decision to put him on a different strategy to team-mate Russell. “We sat in our meeting in the morning of the race, actually the night before they already mentioned that they would like to split the cars,” he explained.
“And for me, I was a bit perplexed by it. Because in the past, when we’ve ever been in that position. So I battled as hard as I could to fight to go on the medium tyre, but the team continued to suggest that I started on the soft. And then when they took the tyre blankets off, everyone was on mediums. I was so angry, so already from that moment I’m frustrated.”
