2015 Monaco Grand Prix - 21-24 May

[Manfer]

Lewis :

Lewis Hamilton has been speaking to Sky's Natalie Pinkham:

The team have said sorry, is that enough?

"Yeah."

How do you go away and take stock and get over this?

"I'll refocus tomorrow and come back and try to win the next race."

Can you just look at it and say 'I can learn and grow from this'?

"It is very difficult at the moment, but I am world champion so I need to behave like one. I like to be the team leader and I think today I showed my pace and what I can do in Monaco. So I feel content in my heart that I did everything I could."

Have you spoken to the key strategists in the team?

"No, but it was a collective decision between us all."

10:30

"I can't really express the way I feel so I won't even attempt to," says Hamilton. "You rely on your team and I saw a screen and it looked like the team was out and I thought Nico had pitted. I couldn't see the guys behind so I thought they had pitted, when the team said to stay out I said 'these tyres are going to drop in temperature' and what I was assuming was these guys were going to be on options and I would be on the harder tyre so they said to pit. So I came in with full confidence that the others would pit."
It was just a case of lot "Too many cooks spoiled the broth". The whole topic has been boiled way over the line by the media, particularly SKY and Hamilton fans. You cannot blame the team solely as he had his doubts. Maybe Nico did not worry about tyre dropping off at the end, and his engineer and him were smart enough to counter that. Its funny people are too pent up to even think about anything else. It was a collective cockup, nothing more.

[GrandAxe]

I agree that Mercedes can't just regard such a mistake. Learn from it. Analyze and find a way to not repeat this. Though firing people out of those circumstances is way off.

The strategist will probably always be the most ungrateful Job in F1 if your team is winning. All those good calls are never seen unless you do something like a Schumi 4 stopper in '04. Only the bad calls are. Then again you hear that the discussion was going on with many people talking. In addition Lewis called that too. Sounds like a team decision to me. Fire everybody? Have fun finding a new team.

This is the second time that you are claiming Lewis made the call. You really shouldn't say such things without backing, for any reason, especially when Mercedes has repeatedly apologised to Lewis.

Nicki Lauda has apologised, same for Toto Wolfe and Lewis race engineer. These were his race engineers words:

'"I'm sorry about that, Lewis," his engineer Peter Bonnington said to him over the radio. "I'll have to have a word with the pit wall." '

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/32865694

Lewis race engineers words strongly hint that the decision came from outside Lewis or his engineering team. Paddy Lowe mans the pit wall and is the one in contact with the computer hacks in Brackley throughout the race.

[mikeerfol]

Just to change subject for a minute; I need to watch a better take of Alonso´s move on Hulkenberg but it seemed to me that the penalty was total bullshit. He had the interior and was alongside the FI. If you are going to penalize such moves (specially on Monaco´s first lap) then don´t tell drivers that we need more action on track.

Ι agree. Didn't the same thing happen between Button and Perez last year? No penalty there...

[AnthonyG]

The Prince and Nico are good friends.. maybe a special request was put in to the chief strategist..
If there's a tin foil hat conspiracy that would be it, as even now I see no sense in what has transpired today.
How can you pit a leader in Monaco? everyone else on the same tyres, both tyres having similar performance... no sense at all.
Special request by Nico's pals is the only thing i can see right now.

The mistake was not the doing a pitstop, comming out in front with new tyres would give an extra security. The mistake was waiting another lap to come in/missing the SC on track... that sort of stuff...

[zeph]

Before his gearbox failed, ALO looked like he had a bit of pace there...and BUT collected points for McLaren. Sure, it was on the slowest track of the year, but still....

I have to say that Verstappen did not impress me today, but a mistake like that can be forgiven in the light of his youth and inexperience, I suppose. If it had been -say- Maldonado (who is having the worst luck this year and in fact not doing bad at all) the lynch mob would be out in full force.

[ChrisM40]

Before his gearbox failed, ALO looked like he had a bit of pace there...and BUT collected points for McLaren. Sure, it was on the slowest track of the year, but still....

I have to say that Verstappen did not impress me today, but a mistake like that can be forgiven in the light of his youth and inexperience, I suppose. If it had been -say- Maldonado (who is having the worst luck this year and in fact not doing bad at all) the lynch mob would be out in full force.

Apart from the crash he most certainly did impress! His pace was great and his thinking with regard to the blue flags was excellent.

[stuartpengs]

Strange call, though history dictates Hamilton shines in the face of adversity. Somehow I don't think it will be a title decider in Rosberg's favour.

Good to see McLaren get some points!

[zeph]

Lewis :

Lewis Hamilton has been speaking to Sky's Natalie Pinkham:

The team have said sorry, is that enough?

"Yeah."

How do you go away and take stock and get over this?

"I'll refocus tomorrow and come back and try to win the next race."

Can you just look at it and say 'I can learn and grow from this'?

"It is very difficult at the moment, but I am world champion so I need to behave like one. I like to be the team leader and I think today I showed my pace and what I can do in Monaco. So I feel content in my heart that I did everything I could."

Have you spoken to the key strategists in the team?

"No, but it was a collective decision between us all."

10:30

"I can't really express the way I feel so I won't even attempt to," says Hamilton. "You rely on your team and I saw a screen and it looked like the team was out and I thought Nico had pitted. I couldn't see the guys behind so I thought they had pitted, when the team said to stay out I said 'these tyres are going to drop in temperature' and what I was assuming was these guys were going to be on options and I would be on the harder tyre so they said to pit. So I came in with full confidence that the others would pit."
It was just a case of lot "Too many cooks spoiled the broth". The whole topic has been boiled way over the line by the media, particularly SKY and Hamilton fans. You cannot blame the team solely as he had his doubts. Maybe Nico did not worry about tyre dropping off at the end, and his engineer and him were smart enough to counter that. Its funny people are too pent up to even think about anything else. It was a collective cockup, nothing more.

No. It was a clear cut cock-up by the strategist, no more no less. Of course HAM is towing the party line of "win together, lose together, collective decision blah blah", he gets paid handsomely to not dump all over the team when things don't go his way.

The facts are:
- HAM was 20 secs clear of ROS when the SC was deployed
- They had ~10 laps left (give or take, not sure of the exact number)
- The team knew ROS was not going to pit (they only have one strategist, remember?)
- Ferrari was too far back to mount a credible challenge, even if they were on fresher tires after the SC with only less than 10 laps to go

If you can present a feasible scenario in which HAM's victory might conceivably be threatened after the SC deployment, I'd love to hear it. But I bet there is none.

As such I agree with whoever said that this is EXACTLY the sort of stuff high-level employees get fired over. A strategist who believes it is necessary to pit the race leader under these circumstances (in Monaco, of all places) deserves to be axed. Unless of course he was acting under orders, but that is tinfoil hat territory.

[sjns]

This is the second time that you are claiming Lewis made the call. You really shouldn't say such things without backing, for any reason, especially when Mercedes has repeatedly apologised to Lewis.

First I'm claiming that Lewis was in that discussion. Nothing more. The post above yours brilliantly summarizes what made me thinking that. Especially the excerpt from the Press Conference.

...

And then again you don't want to be the team that sets the standard in firing every human being for making a mistake. How about we do that with drivers too? A highly competitive atmosphere also needs a bit of harmony and some margin of error. People need to feel safe to push boundaries, not get sacked every 5 minutes.

[GrandAxe]

This is the second costly pit stop gaffe Mercedes has made in 5 races - a 40% failure rate - the first was in Malaysia. That is an unacceptable failure rate by any standards.
Even I, a layman, could see the error long before it happened. I kept praying that it was a feint.
When you think about it, even if they had waved Lewis through, the disaster would not have occurred. I'm sure someone must have realised by then that they had embarked on a remarkably bone-headed adventure.

These days, strategy is made mostly by computer simulation, far away from the race track. Computers are hardly ever wrong, so that leaves human errors such as, faults in software, poor IT engineers, sub par communication, poor leadership etc.

For Daimler, a corporation that's worth billions, that see's F1 as bargain advertising, it shouldn't be wallet stretching to get in a couple of savants to call strategy and hack their software. Now they are getting the opposite of bargain advertising, they are being talked about for all the wrong reasons; most people see the gaffe today as little more than an expression of incompetence (to use kind words).

Someone should get fired.

[NathanOlder]

Also as for Lewis not passing Vettel, not sure if its been pointed out but Lewis didnt have any DRS so that made his job impossible.

[gray41]

Bad race from the strategists, cost the team a 1-2.

[GrandAxe]

First I'm claiming that Lewis was in that discussion. Nothing more. The post above yours brilliantly summarizes what made me thinking that. Especially the excerpt from the Press Conference.

There is nothing in that post that suggests that Lewis made the call. If anything, it does the exact opposite and absolves him.

The summary of that post is that: Lewis was in a conversation about his tyre temperatures, then he saw a message on his screen that indicated that the guys behind were pitting; so when he got called in, he did not question it. That's quite a long way from him making the call.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

And then again you don't want to be the team that sets the standard in firing every human being for making a mistake.

You remember Mr. Norbert Haug, the man who took responsibility for 2012 debacle and fired himself? He has left that standard and legacy to follow. Hasn't the same actions changed the Ferrari this year?

How about we do that with drivers too?

Isn't thats exactly what Ferrari did with Barrichello, Kimi (2009) and Massa? McLaren with Coulthard?

A highly competitive atmosphere also needs a bit of harmony and some margin of error. People need to feel safe to push boundaries, not get sacked every 5 minutes.

2014 Germany, 2015 Malaysia, 2015 Monaco isn't enough? Help me with one master stroke that this strategy team has pulled off? The car has been so fast in last year and half that it hasn't really tested the strategy team much. Imagine if it would have been normal that Merc had to be fighting with 2 or 3 teams in every GP, these idiots would have been exposed to the core and would have probably gone home long back, like Loic bigois whose repeated dogs kept failing.

[mikeerfol]

5 place penalty for Verstappen.