F1 News
Windsor: "Mercedes seems stuck in their way of thinking"
- GPblog.com
That Lewis Hamilton did not win the race was not just down to Max Verstappen's speed. "It looks to me as if Mercedes in their way got locked into their way of thinking track position, track position," said Peter Windsor. "We’ve got to stick to the strategy”',"
When the safety car came out to catch the drivers, Verstappen was in front. Verstappen was immediately called in for a change from hard to soft tyres. Lewis Hamilton joined Bernd Mayländer's car on his old medium tyres. A repeat of Silverstone seemed to follow: almost the entire field went in for soft tyres and after all the pit stops the race leader was on old mediums. Leclerc was then no match for the drivers behind him and was driven off the podium. Windsor finds it incomprehensible that Mercedes did not bring Hamilton in with that example in mind. "Track position when the race is in full flow is one thing. Track position when you’re bunched up behind the safety car is a completely different thing and it’s nothing like the same currency or value."
Engine Verstappen scaled back
Verstappen came in behind Hamilton on the soft tyre and he was able to pass the British driver immediately after start-finish. According to Windsor, this was not at the top speed of the Red Bull car. He states that the engine of the Dutch driver was considerably downsized for more reliability. The engine was set up to be about four kilometres faster than the engines of competitors Mercedes and Ferrari. Verstappen therefore used his overtake button to overtake Hamilton and by the time he entered the Tarzan curve he had already passed his British rival.
Russell demanded soft tyre
With his old medium tyres, Hamilton was a sitting duck after that. He had to let teammate George Russell pass him and barely managed to maintain his third place. The Mercedes team would also have intended to put Russell on medium tyres, but the young Briton, who only started driving for Mercedes this year, had other plans and demanded that the team put the soft tyre on his car. Although it went against their planned strategy, they granted Russell's wish. In doing so he was able to pass seven times world champion Hamilton and move up to second place on the podium, while Hamilton himself had to settle for third.