Stradivarius wrote:I think what Mercedes did makes sense if they wanted to guarantee the victory. They obviously were not 100% certain that the tyres would last to end if someone from the back came on fresh tires, so they split the strategy between the two drivers to make sure one of them did the right thing. One could of course argue that Rosberg should have been the one gambling on the riskier strategy, but on the other hand, Hamilton seemed to have time for a stop.
Anyway, this is what we get as long as formula 1 insists on using a safety car when accidents happens. It is an unfair concept by nature to rob everyone of the time advantage they have built up over the race and some times the best drivers have to pay the price of someone else's mistake. This has happened many times before and it will happen again. On a side note, safety car is only unfair, it is also an extremely inefficient way of maintaining safety, as cleaning of the track is hampered by the field passing every 2 minutes, and some times driving under safety car could also be risky. My understanding is that the reason safety car is used in formula 1 is to creat excitement and to some times put new life into a race that seemed over. In other words, the very purpose is to accomplish exactly what happened to Hamilton today.
Vettel in 2011? i think, had old dead tyres and has maintained the lead of a race against cars on much faster tyres. At this track you simply cant be overtaken if your car has good traction.
Hamilton was never under threat from the ferrari in third place. Nico is between Hamilton and Vettel, how the heck can Vettel be a threat?
Similar thing happened in Malaysia.. and we've seen similar things will Lewis in the past. He's just not lucky when it comes to his team's strategy. Always seems to attract high risk tactics from his team.