Why Russell would need to slow down... ? It should've been the opposite : going full send to try to pressure Sainz (probably dropping Norris in doing so) and Hamilton doing 15 qualy laps to catch up. In this scenario we are talking about a possible 1-2, because there's no DRS train, Russell could overtake Sainz while he's trying to defend from Hamilton in an eventual 3 way battle etc...basti313 wrote: ↑18 Sep 2023, 11:11For him or for the team? I mean...at the time we are talking about the VSC stop, the strategy was already blown by the team.
I think there were two scenarios:
- One of the Mercs pits, the other one joins the DRS train until the end...nothing to win, most likely the scenario we would have seen. So yes, for Russel the better choice maybe. But do you want to race or do you want to play "who can go slowest" with Ferrari?
- Hamilton pits and Russel sacrifices his race completely and brings down the pace even further than Sainz did...I guess not even Perez would do this, right? But that would have been in hindsight the only way to win at this point.
No way.
Or the other way round: The first and major strategy error was in the first stint. The gap to Leclerc was too big, they did not even try to put pressure on him.
That is where they lost the race: They would have needed to finish the tires in lap 15, put all the pressure on Lec once he was well out of DRS range and to the undercut. In any case this would have been a Vettel in 2019 move with Rus being in front.
Well, you need to race to win a race. I think it was not thinkable before, not even for Ferrari that Sainz slows down to give Lando a pull. Was it two laps to the end when Lando had a bad exit and was suddenly 1.6sec behind....and Sainz made a huge lift into T1 to get him back into DRS?Spoutnik wrote: ↑18 Sep 2023, 10:41He had a certain 2nd place and gave it for an uncertain win. The risk-reward balance was quite uncertain (and I'm not taking into account the end result which is a DNF because he exploded mentally), while in the case of Hamilton in 4th, with a free stop it was a no brainer to take the extra stop.
I agree with your point about the first stint, that's exactly what I was saying in an earlier post : Russell was focused on the extrastop, never on pressuring these guy, or pass them on track. I get it, it's Singapore but there's spillover effect in doing so : let a gap create, allowing them to preserve tyre etc..
I just think you are wrong about Vettel 2019 scenario because it would've been too early to make the stop imo, but If we assume it's impossible to pass on this track why not !