Seerix wrote: ↑10 Jun 2024, 11:02
Curious Lando was saying in the post race interviews they did all they could, but the SC and slick pace were the reason for not winning.
However, later during the press conference he changed attitude and mentioned they could have won if the decision making and communication was better/faster.
Looking at the replay he had like 2-3s to pit on the first safety car lap. He managed to ask "pit or not" on the radio, but Will started rambling "if the rain... if you think... stay out". Lando was not keen on pitting for inters at that point (it was basically dry already with rain coming soon) and was only convinced after everyone behind him pitted for inters.
On the other hand with Oscar they had more time. Tom said "We expect rain, do you want to pit for fresh inters?". Oscar: "Uhh, yes."
There definitely was an opportunity for Lando to pit right away, but they were not really clear on which tyre to put on and also it would have been a very short call, so maybe pitstop would have been slow if they did not have tyres in the pitlane etc.
IMO the tyre choice was on team this time as they saw the rain coming, but the driver only saw almost dry track.
I am liking Oscar's defense. He does not let people pass easily. Regarding driver preference. At one point towards the end, Tom even asked him if he could challenge VER, but Oscar only said he needs to focus on RUS behind. So it seems the team was willing to give him a go if he felt up for it.
Anyway, very nice race. Cool to see McL fighting at the top and I hope to see more of it.
I know it’s easy for me in my arm chair to say but for me they need to change their procedure slightly, this is the second time umming and arrring has cost the shot at a win.
Perhaps there should be a new understanding where the team have a default option always made for the end of the current lap.
In this case ‘if there is a SC and our driver can dive into the pit lane we fit inter’.
Same procedure in a dry race, ‘if we pit this lap we fit the hards’ or in the late safety car scenario ‘if we pit now it’s for a soft’
I know it can’t be so automated all the time and decisions have to be made on the fly but yesterday it was pretty clear they were hanging on to the first set of inters to fit a new set once it started to rain- they had multiple lads to make the ‘default’ selection as I’m suggesting.
First stint in particular, the conditions really seemed to suit us - I'm guessing the conditions suited the car's 'tyre window' well. Yet another great haul of points, so chuffed their hard work has paid off these last 2/3 yrs
