Mercedes on Hamilton's strategic error: 'Clearly made wrong choice'
F1 News
- GPblog.com
The moment of the race in Hungary last weekend was perhaps not even the crash of Valtteri Bottas, but the restart afterwards. Lewis Hamilton was all alone on the track, while everyone else had dived into the pits for a tyre change.
The Briton then drove on and entered the race later, only to come from behind to finish second and take over the lead in the championship. Where Wolff said afterwards that they were not wrong, technical director Mike Elliott says in the race debrief of Mercedes now says that they made the wrong choice.
"In hindsight, we clearly made the wrong choice. You have to keep in mind that decisions like that are very difficult to make at the time. We were tormented by the tyre choice on the restart, but all the drivers opted for the intermediates. Soon everyone went for the other option, but with us the choice was more difficult than with the rest."
Elliott explains choice
Because there was definitely an idea behind not bringing Hamilton in. This was partly because they couldn't cheat on the rivals, who were all driving at the back thanks to Bottas' crash.
"Our biggest rival(Max Verstappen, ed.) was further back in the field, so we didn't want to make a stupid mistake and end up crashing in the pit lane with someone else. Still, we would have been better off, even if we had got to the back of the grid in the pit lane."
It did cost Hamilton the win in the end, but as mentioned, the Briton's second-place still secured him the lead in the championship.