During the race in Miami, a dialogue took place between Lewis Hamilton and the race engineer, in which the engineer suggested that the driver decide on a pit stop while the safety car was on track, sparking outrage from Lewis.
Mike Elliott, technical director of Mercedes, explained why the team did not call Hamilton to the pits during the safety car and why they offered the driver to stop himself: “First the virtual safety car mode was turned on on the track. At this point we turned on George Russell’s pits and it turned out to be the right decision.
Before that, Lewis Valtteri was chasing Bottas and George was riding a bit behind the pair. Both Valtteri and Lewis were on hard tyres, Lewis was closing the gap and we thought he could catch up if the race continued like this.
However, the virtual safety car quickly turned into a real one, plugging all the gaps. As a result, George was on new Medium tires and Lewis and Valtteri on worn hard tires before the restart. We can say that with Lewis we found ourselves between a rock and a hard place.
The safety car took off at a very inopportune moment for Lewis. Had we called him into the pits, he would have returned to the track behind George. We didn’t call him and he stayed ahead of his partner, who had newer tires.
Of the new kits, we could only supply Lewis Hard or Soft. You would think that Soft would be a good choice in that situation, but we understood that these tires would overheat very quickly. Considering that Lewis would be behind George after the pit stop and he would have to fight him. It would just overheat the tires more.
In that situation, there was no right decision. If you’ve seen the race on TV, you may have heard us ask Lewis what he wanted to do. We asked this question because there was no right or wrong answer. Sometimes the driver understands the situation better by feeling the car than the mechanic, who has access to telemetry. In the race the conditions developed in such a way that Lewis lost due to the safety car.
Source: F1 News
I’m Todderic Kirkman, a journalist and author for athletistic. I specialize in covering all news related to sports, ranging from basketball to football and everything in between. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, I have become an invaluable asset to my team. My ambition is to bring the most up-to-date information on sports topics around the world.
