At Singapore during the qualification phase, Mercedes technical chief James Allison admitted that the team made a “clear mistake” by starting Lewis Hamilton on soft tires. Choosing to start the Marina Bay Street Circuit on soft rubber, a decision Hamilton was the only driver in the top 10 to make, ended up undermining his race.
Offstage Hamilter Jim Andrews’ Struggles
Starting on the softer tires for today’s race, Lewis Hamilton could not gain any positions despite briefly challenging Max Verstappen at Turn 1. And then suddenly, from that point onwards, Hamilton started to slow down, and at the seventeenth lap, he had to make an unplanned pit stop.
A proper continuation of this argument would reveal that this early stop was itself costly, as the following will seek to illustrate. He had to back off from his compatriot George Russell’s Mercedes and lost positions, including to Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc. Unfortunately, his race was determined by a plan that proved catastrophic.
Hamilton’s Criticisms of the Mercedes Strategy
After the race, Hamilton did not hide his anger over the decision made by his team on Sunday during the race. That was when the seven-time world champion spoke out at a Petronas-sponsored event, asking why they would start on the soft compound when competitors began on the more long-wearing mediums. Mercedes has since accepted blame for the incident, with Allison giving more details about the issues in a video posted on the team’s YouTube channel.
Allison Explains the Rationale
James Allison began by acknowledging the team’s mistake. He elaborated on the thought process behind the decision, explaining that the team had hoped the soft tires would give Hamilton an advantage at the start. He said that
The reasoning was that the soft tire very 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 sort of difficulties that we then experienced on the soft rubber.
Unfortunately, this strategy did not turn out well, as Hamilton did not make any positions on the track. The team also failed to gauge the degradation rate of the soft tires, which was realized as the race went on. Allison also added that the soft tires wore out quicker than expected, during which Hamilton had to come into the pits. He mentioned that
We didn’t get the place at the start; the pace started building up from around Lap 5, and that left Lewis with a car that wasn’t particularly happy anyway, suffering from quite poor degradation and needing to come in early as a consequence. It really ruined his race for him. A clear mistake.
These failures in strategy during the race also led to Hamilton’s weakness in racing, where he could not see the position, enabling him not to be strategic enough to cover up for it. Perhaps the Singapore GP was not the best race for Hamilton and Mercedes, but the mistake committed was openly accepted, and the team is aware of them and can change. As the Formula 1 season continues, Mercedes will most definitely not afford such blunders in successive races.
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