2023 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[Spoutnik]

Yes but I feel it hurts the team today because the best strategy for him was to keep the Hards imo, despite all the PR he did about the extra stop.

For 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.

I think it's not impossible to believe he could've overtake Sainz as the Merc preserve the ryre better, or he could've pressured Sainz into a mistake (as he did himself...).

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.

He 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.

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?

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...

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 !

[chrisc90]

Someone said they were always going 2 stopper.

If that was the case you would have had to force the Ferrari and McLaren along, knowing your hard tyres aren’t needing to last to the end, and force them to also change their strategy.
It was obvious from about lap 2-3 what was going to happen with most teams just driving along in a precession on the same tyre strategy.
If merc were committed to a 2 stopper, they should have been all over the back of the cars ahead forcing them to use their tyres.

[Spoutnik]

Someone said they were always going 2 stopper.

If that was the case you would have had to force the Ferrari and McLaren along, knowing your hard tyres aren’t needing to last to the end, and force them to also change their strategy.
It was obvious from about lap 2-3 what was going to happen with most teams just driving along in a precession on the same tyre strategy.
If merc were committed to a 2 stopper, they should have been all over the back of the cars ahead forcing them to use their tyres.

Yes that's exactly my point. Russell was doing his PR about the 2 stopper all weeks to stay 1.5s behind the Ferrari in "park the bus" mode.
Hamilton made this strategy work against Verstappen precisley because he was all over him, even if these were track where it's very hard to overtake (Hungary 2019 & Spain 2021).
That's why Im saying at that point (and without taking into account his mistake) once he let the procession happened for most of the race he should've kept his hards and try to do it on track.

[chrisc90]

You can also argue that the second safety car, VSC, saved them from their original plan of a 2 stopper, if that was the intention all along.

Without the VSC the pit lane loss would have put them even further behind and would have been lucky to catch the leaders by the end of the race. Given there was 5 laps? Left to try attempt a overtake, that would have been significantly less laps if they boxed under normal conditions. Extra 9 or 10seconds saved putting under VSC. At 2seconds a lap it would have been mega tight at the end and the original strategy wouldn’t have worked.

[Astro85]

You can also argue that the second safety car, VSC, saved them from their original plan of a 2 stopper, if that was the intention all along.

Without the VSC the pit lane loss would have put them even further behind and would have been lucky to catch the leaders by the end of the race. Given there was 5 laps? Left to try attempt a overtake, that would have been significantly less laps if they boxed under normal conditions. Extra 9 or 10seconds saved putting under VSC. At 2seconds a lap it would have been mega tight at the end and the original strategy wouldn’t have worked.

By that point I very much doubt they were even going to box for new mediums, again, Mercedes are shockingly poor with strategy and don't have the car to pull them out of the dirt anymore.

[basti313]

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...

No way. Sainz would always just go the same pace. No way to push him on old tires, it would have been just a DRS train with Sai-Rus-Nor. This is exactly where it lacked in understanding:
Sainz could go as slow as he wanted after T7. He always just pushed T5/T13/T18 and no one on similarly old tires could follow into the DRS zone close enough. That was exactly what Vettel did in 2019.

Yes that's exactly my point. Russell was doing his PR about the 2 stopper all weeks to stay 1.5s behind the Ferrari in "park the bus" mode.
Hamilton made this strategy work ....

I do not see your differentiation on Russel here. Instead of pushing Hamilton fell into 2sec+ to Norris on lap 18...at the same time when Rus was more than 2sec behind Lec. That was a team decision to not push when they had the only chance to win by pushing.

[Spoutnik]

[Juzh]

Worth noting hamilton also cooked his tyres 4 or 5 laps before the end, then started having hude slides. Russell was probably in similar situation and that's why none were able to make a move on anyone.

[Astro85]

Worth noting hamilton also cooked his tyres 4 or 5 laps before the end, then started having hude slides. Russell was probably in similar situation and that's why none were able to make a move on anyone.

Exactly, plus, his initial massive pace advantage over Russell had subsided by the time he passed Leclerc.

[214270]

I doubt the 0.7 in tyre saving by HAM relative to RUS out of the pits is any sort of reason. Lap 47 through to 59, HAM was basically faster save for the laps overtaking LEC. Devastating pace

[basti313]

Worth noting hamilton also cooked his tyres 4 or 5 laps before the end, then started having hude slides. Russell was probably in similar situation and that's why none were able to make a move on anyone.

Yes. The post on twitter is just stupid by cutting at lap 53. The two subsequent laps Rus was clearly faster until he was at 2sec to Norris.
It was obvious, that the dirty air affected the laptime strongly once they got within 2sec. No idea why this is ignored on this pace discussion.

[mkay]

Worth noting hamilton also cooked his tyres 4 or 5 laps before the end, then started having hude slides. Russell was probably in similar situation and that's why none were able to make a move on anyone.

Yes. The post on twitter is just stupid by cutting at lap 53. The two subsequent laps Rus was clearly faster until he was at 2sec to Norris.
It was obvious, that the dirty air affected the laptime strongly once they got within 2sec. No idea why this is ignored on this pace discussion.

RUS was clearly faster because Hamilton passed LEC on L54 while RUS cleared him on L53.

IMO, I do believe they should have split strategies. Consolidate P2 with RUS and then throw the dice with HAM. It's worth noting HAM lost ~2 seconds due to the double stack.

At worst, HAM would have remained P4 (stuck in DRS train). At best, he potentially could have won the race had he been able to pick off the drivers at the front one-by-one (though that would have remained a long shot still).

HAM probably would have agreed to give back P2 to RUS if he failed to overtake SAI (a la Hungary 2017 with BOT).

[PlatinumZealot]

The complexion of the race would be a lot different if George hadn't pushed Lewis off at turn one. It would be two Mercs chasing Sainz to the end.

[basti313]

The complexion of the race would be a lot different if George hadn't pushed Lewis off at turn one. It would be two Mercs chasing Sainz to the end.

Classic. Absolute animal.

[dialtone]

The complexion of the race would be a lot different if George hadn't pushed Lewis off at turn one. It would be two Mercs chasing Sainz to the end.

Not so sure because of the double stack during the SC. Norris had no double stack while Lewis was the 2nd in his stack like LEC. Hard to be so definitive and anyway they pitted again so they gave up position to Norris anyway.

Only chance to win would have been to sacrifice George and have lewis pass Norris on his own first, but even that would have been very hard anyway.