Mercedes was one of only two, along with McLaren, not to make a double pit stop after the safety car was deployed during the race in Jeddah. This allowed Lewis Hamilton to regain positions and McLaren driver Lando Norris to take the lead, but after their mandatory pit stops, Lewis and Lando fell back.
Mercedes chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin admitted that the team’s strategists had made a mistake and that Hamilton’s pit stop should have followed George Russell’s.
Andrew Shovlin: “In retrospect, we are all strong. Yes, we should have made a double pit stop, but at that point we didn’t know if there would be another safety car incident during the race and we didn’t know how far we could get with the tires.
The safety car appeared on the track around lap seven and at that point we had to decide whether to make a double pit stop or not. If the safety car had come out on the eighth or ninth lap, we would certainly have made a double pit stop.
At that moment, Lewis was behind and ideally he should have left a gap for his teammate, but that is forbidden: you cannot stop the peloton when the safety car is on the track. Other cars obviously cannot overtake you, but the driver will be fined if he holds back. So Lewis would have to wait until we made a pit stop for George.
At that time there were a lot of cars passing by the pit lane and we couldn’t let go of George quickly – Lewis would just get stuck and we didn’t want to waste time.
At the same time, we understood that if Lewis did not stop and the safety car entered the race for the second time, we would gain an advantage. And then we decided to separate the strategies of our riders.
If we had known at that moment that the safety car would not be on track a second time, we would have made a double pit stop and this would have turned out to be the right decision for Lewis. But at that moment we decided to do what we did, but if the safety car had come onto the track a lap or two earlier, we would have made a double pit stop.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
