Having to cover over seventy laps on the same set of tyres, during the Monaco Grand Prix the cars maintained an extremely slow pace for strategic reasons, while at the same time trying to keep their rivals under control, so that a window did not open to make a tire change.
It essentially all started with those who started on the hard at the start of the race in the hope of being able to go long and take advantage of the Safety Car’s entry. However, the accident during the first lap changed the plans, forcing all the teams to change tires in order to respect the rule which requires the use of two different specifications during the race.
On a track where track position makes the difference, even those who were on the hard tire at the start had to replace their tires to avoid making an additional pit stop. For this reason, those who then found themselves having to change to medium at the restart maintained an extremely slow pace to keep the tires alive until the checkered flag, also influencing the pace of the leading drivers, with Ferrari which in turn raised the times so as not to give Lando Norris the opportunity to have a window on George Russell to change tires.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W15
Photo by: Erik Junius
Russell himself was the first of the group of average drivers who kept Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton behind him, even if Mercedes still tried to shuffle the cards on the table by stopping the seven-time world champion when the window opened on Yuki Tsunoda, in eighth place at the time.
However, there is an interesting takeaway from this stop, which is the fact that Hamilton was not told that it was an attempted undercut, because Mercedes themselves actually had doubts about whether it was actually possible to overtake Verstappen after the break.
When he made the pit stop, the Briton was told over the radio “outlap normal”. At Mercedes, the laps after the break are coded with two modes: “normal” for those in which there is no need to force, “critical” for those in which it is instead important to make an aggressive exit lap, such as in the case of an undercut attempt. Not having received the message, the outlap was critical, Lewis did not force the pace, so much so that in the second sector with the hard tire he was only a few tenths faster than the last lap he had done with the medium, while in the the last split time proved to be much more competitive.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W15
Photo by: Erik Junius
This was not enough to complete the undercut, also because Red Bull were aware of what Mercedes’ plans were, so even Verstappen himself had been told to improve his pace, which is why in the end the times were almost equal.
When asked why it wasn’t suggested to Hamilton that the outlap was critical to the final result, as the seven-time world champion himself suggested via radio, Wolff replied: “There was a miscommunication between us on the pit wall and we made a mistake. It should have been a critical outlap, trying to undercut.”
Behind the scenes, however, in reality even the team had doubts about whether that lap could be enough to turn the tide of sixth position. While it was true that the pace was very slow, Verstappen could have pushed using a still healthy average, so much so that Russell completed his best pass towards the end of the Grand Prix. Furthermore, there were doubts about the hard warm-up, because in Monaco there aren’t many corners that put energy on the tires anyway.
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
“However, then there was discussion as to whether any outlap would be sufficient with the new tire. So the message he received was confusing at best, but probably wrong. It should have been a critical outlap and the underlying concern was that, if we had destroyed that tire in just one lap, we didn’t know what would happen next. But in summary the wrong message for Lewis is that it’s the team’s fault,” added Wolff.
Asked to explain why Hamilton had waited so long in the race before opting to pit, given that he had long since opened the window to Yuki Tsunoda’s RB, the Mercedes Team Principal then added: “We wanted to be close to Verstappen and then do the undercut, but obviously we got the message completely wrong.”
Given the privileged position and the risk of suffering an undercut by Verstappen, who was really glued to him before his pit stop, George Russell chose not to return and continued until the checkered flag with the medium tires he had taken under the Red flag. A choice that paid off for him, not only because he maintained fifth position, but also because the tires were actually still in excellent condition even at the end of the race, so in times of need the Briton was able to push.
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