YOU GOT IT ALL WRONG!
Fuming Hamilton says Mercedes cost him ‘easy’ win by ignoring his strategy call
LEWIS HamIlton claimed he would have secured an ‘easy’ victory at the Singapore Grand Prix but for his mercedes team ignoring his strategy call.
they agreed, with his boss toto Wolff admitting they ‘f***** it up’. the world champion finished fourth in a chess game of a race, cutting a disappointed figure as the fireworks lit up the night sky for Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
the German’s win after 392 barren days owed as much to tactical fortune as Hamilton’s did to misfortune of the same variety.
the central issue was that Hamilton, who started the race from second on the grid, was told not to undercut the two red cars (pitstop before they did) as he had hoped to. He instead stayed out for an age — seven laps longer than Vettel and five longer than Charles leclerc, the then leader.
‘I knew we should have undercut,’ said Hamilton, who still opened his championship lead to 65 points. ‘I kind of knew it t this morning in the briefing. they said I might come out in traffic but I was like “let’s just take the risk”. But they didn’t.’
on thin ice, he added this rider: ‘ We win and lose together as a team so we will take this on the chin. It’s painful for us because we could have easily won today.’
It might have been worse for Hamilton. He would have been two spots further back but for mercedes telling Valtteri Bottas to play the ‘team game’ by reducing his lap time by three seconds so the Brit could slot in ahead of him after his belated stop.
Bottas complied, possibly too willingly for comfort.
the truth is that the advantage of the undercut — going i in earlier than the opposition to have the initial advantage on new tyres — was bigger than most pit-lane experts realised, although not Hamilton, of course.
this was demonstrated at Ferrari. they made an on-the-hoof call to bring in Vettel a lap earlier than leclerc, a move that resulted in the German taking the lead and the former pole-sitter finishing in second place.
It seemed at the time as if Ferrari were favouring Vettel with the superior strategy. He is their lavishly paid no 1. He needed a tonic. In contrast, leclerc, just 21, was abuzz after two consecutive victories.
leclerc initially thought he was being stitched up, too, protesting over the radio: ‘to be completely honest, I don’t understand that undercut. We will discuss this after the race.’
But every boffin in the paddock afterwards thought, no, Ferrari had merely found themselves in a fix. the undercut, taken to ensnare Hamilton — then running second to Vettel’s third — was an unexpected masterstroke and how could they tell their main man to cede the lead to leclerc once the crucial move had played out better than expected?
In fairness to leclerc, he conducted himself well in the aftermath. You could see he was not ecstatic but he was gracious enough to embrace Vettel.
as for mercedes asking Bottas to make way, it was not as simple as the team saying their two drivers can’t race each other.
mercedes, through Hamilton, were going for the win — keeping him out much longer, once they had missed the undercut, in reaction to Red Bull’s strategy with max Verstappen.
It should be noted that Hamilton at this point encouraged them to keep him on track. So it wasn’t all someone else’s fault.
anyway, it didn’t work. But they felt that Hamilton had lost so much time in this futile endeavour that it was unfair to see him go back to sixth place, behind not only Bottas but also Red Bull’s alex albon.
that is why they told Bottas to slow down, not only opening a space for Hamilton ahead of him but keeping albon further back. So mercedes were running fourth and fifth rather than fourth and sixth.
Enough excuses. mercedes
flunked it, Ferrari didn’t and they are coming into great form. Red Bull did moderately well, with Verstappen third.
Wolff was creditably honest afterwards, saying: ‘There was no driver mistake. James Vowles ( chief strategist) took the strategy mistake on his wide shoulders and said “I have f***** it up”.
‘We have created an environment to say that we didn’t do a good enough job and apologise to each other.’