2015 Monaco Grand Prix - 21-24 May

[wickedz50]

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.

One more Lewis fan!!! Stop complaining and try to understand that it's just a bad stupid call, arrogant Lauda and his crew.

[turbof1]

If we take for a moment a breather, I'd like to point out that there are a few people here who actually used their head and didn't saw the strategic 'mistake' so much as black and white wrong.

We should go over a few facts:
-Virtual Safety Car was the primary procedure, which was highlighted for about 15 seconds.
-Then a switch goes to an actual Safety Car procedure
-Hamilton decided with the team together to pit. In the past he has pointed to the team when a strategic call was bad or wrong, or atleast asked questions about it. I believe he even did so in Malaysia. This time he did not, which indicates very much he had a big part in the decision, albeit of course feeded with information from the team.

I think it was a genuine believe from both Hamilton and the team that if Vettel pitted, they'd be under threat. Ultimately it proved wrong, and indeed history has repeated itself on Monaco. But I think given the small amount of time it was atleast understandable that the choice went to pitting.

It's the ghost of Monaco I suppose.

[Stradivarius]

10 years ago, Alonso was overtaken by both Williams drivers towards the end of the race in Monaco. The relevance could of course be discussed since the tires were different and they used the same tires through the whole race, but statements like: "This is Monaco, so the state of the tires doesn't matter, you can fend of any attack no matter what happens," are not very convincing. It is not always easy to predict how the tires will perform after 35 laps when they have been cooled down due to a safety car event and then need to be brought up to temperature again. You can always assume nothing dramatic will happen and be right most of the time, but now and then you will be wrong. This time Mercedes covered both options by changing tires on one car and leaving the other in front. Both championships seem secure anyway based on everything that has happened this year and last year, so not winning in Monaco was maybe one of the worst threats for the team.

[Jordan44]

If we take for a moment a breather, I'd like to point out that there are a few people here who actually used their head and didn't saw the strategic 'mistake' so much as black and white wrong.

We should go over a few facts:
-Virtual Safety Car was the primary procedure, which was highlighted for about 15 seconds.
-Then a switch goes to an actual Safety Car procedure
-Hamilton decided with the team together to pit. In the past he has pointed to the team when a strategic call was bad or wrong, or atleast asked questions about it. I believe he even did so in Malaysia. This time he did not, which indicates very much he had a big part in the decision, albeit of course feeded with information from the team.

I think it was a genuine believe from both Hamilton and the team that if Vettel pitted, they'd be under threat. Ultimately it proved wrong, and indeed history has repeated itself on Monaco. But I think given the small amount of time it was atleast understandable that the choice went to pitting.

It's the ghost of Monaco I suppose.

Lewis may have asked them if it was a sensible idea to pit, but that's not the point. The strategist they hire should be able to do basic maths to work out if Lewis comes out ahead of Nico and Sebastian or not to decide if it's worth the risk, and it isn't, because this is Monaco. You can't overtake. It's a huge mistake from the team, and it's the second strategy mistake now this year under a safety car. I still can't believe they made such a silly error. It's the second time this year and they've made plenty of mistakes before and it needs sorting. James Vowles is past his prime and out of his depth in this team.

[timorous]

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.

Hungary 2014 was also a strategy mistake when they put Hamilton onto the medium tyres rather than softs. The strategy team has made enough large mistakes that it needs to be looked at.

I also agree with what SKY were saying, why bring him in if they know they are not bringing in Rosberg? The only threat would have been if Vettel had dived into the pits but as everyone says track position is king at Monaco and it is unlikely Vettel would have been able to overtake Rosberg, let alone overtake both. Even if they had gotten the timings correct it only would have taken a stuck wheelnut to end up in the same position. There was very little potential reward and way too much risk for it to have even been considered.

[iotar__]

5 places for Verstappen is not enough. It's the same penalty Perez got for a mistake in defending with a broken car and with some Massa's involvement (he was too close). How is that similar? Here it was 100% one sided, high speed and dangerous move between barriers in Monaco. Grosjean got 10 places grid for less than that in 2012 here and Maldonado 10 places and drive-through for low speed collision in Bahrain '13. Are they waiting for injuries?

I'm a bit surprised by the amount of over the top apologies by Wolff. I don't recall anything similar directed at Rosberg after Silverstone, Canada, Singapore, Abu Dhabi or even Hungary where they lost a win. Weird, it's as if they are not treating drivers equally. It would be nice if those counting Mercedes blunders didn't forget the ones affecting Rosberg.

[QLDriver]

The difference between the driver and the team is that the driver has very limited data - basically, what he can see, feel on the car, and what the team tells him. As I understand it, Lewis saw the Mercedes team on one of the TV screens and thought they had pitted Nico, so he commented that his tyres would be cold at the end of the race. The team KNEW that Nico and SV hadn't pitted, and knew the deltas, and still pitted him.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

If we take for a moment a breather, I'd like to point out that there are a few people here who actually used their head and didn't saw the strategic 'mistake' so much as black and white wrong.

We should go over a few facts:
-Virtual Safety Car was the primary procedure, which was highlighted for about 15 seconds.
-Then a switch goes to an actual Safety Car procedure
-Hamilton decided with the team together to pit. In the past he has pointed to the team when a strategic call was bad or wrong, or atleast asked questions about it. I believe he even did so in Malaysia. This time he did not, which indicates very much he had a big part in the decision, albeit of course feeded with information from the team.

I think it was a genuine believe from both Hamilton and the team that if Vettel pitted, they'd be under threat. Ultimately it proved wrong, and indeed history has repeated itself on Monaco. But I think given the small amount of time it was atleast understandable that the choice went to pitting.

It's the ghost of Monaco I suppose.

Lewis may have asked them if it was a sensible idea to pit, but that's not the point. The strategist they hire should be able to do basic maths to work out if Lewis comes out ahead of Nico and Sebastian or not to decide if it's worth the risk, and it isn't, because this is Monaco. You can't overtake. It's a huge mistake from the team, and it's the second strategy mistake now this year under a safety car. I still can't believe they made such a silly error.

If those who get paid to do this job pay attention, generally this year, it has been extremely difficult to overtake as demonstrated by Bottas twice in Bahrain and Barcelona with very different tyres and as also demonstrated by Vettel in Barcelona against Lewis who was almost a second faster. On a track which is notorious for not allowing overtaking on leaders and enabling leaders to win in any situation, taking a decision to guard against a non threat, was absolutely idiotic and clearly shows what kind of rubbish people are sitting on Mercedes strategy team. That lesson has been taught to these idiots in more expensive manner one more time, Lewis on fresh set of faster compound couldn't overtake totally aged slower compound on this track. Do they need any more lessons?

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Weird, it's as if they are not treating drivers equally.

Does their pay package sound anything like that? Oh one more time time to add into your book, Mercedes did gave a pit stop to Nico out of turn as he was SLOW and couldn't pull out a gap to Ferrari like Lewis did. Please record this.

[Jordan44]

5 places for Verstappen is not enough. It's the same penalty Perez got for a mistake in defending with a broken car and with some Massa's involvement (he was too close). How is that similar? Here it was 100% one sided, high speed and dangerous move between barriers in Monaco. Grosjean got 10 places grid for less than that in 2012 here and Maldonado 10 places and drive-through for low speed collision in Bahrain '13. Are they waiting for injuries?

I'm a bit surprised by the amount of over the top apologies by Wolff. I don't recall anything similar directed at Rosberg after Silverstone, Canada, Singapore, Abu Dhabi or even Hungary where they lost a win. Weird, it's as if they are not treating drivers equally. It would be nice if those counting Mercedes blunders didn't forget the ones affecting Rosberg.

Because Silverstone, Canada, Singapore and Abu Dhabi are completely different circumstances. Nico didn't have a comfortable 20 second lead in these races. He had mechanical failures, which cannot always be blamed on human error and is far harder to avoid than a schoolboy strategy error. Did they say sorry to Lewis when he had technical failures? No. Case closed.

[GrandAxe]

If we take for a moment a breather, I'd like to point out that there are a few people here who actually used their head and didn't saw the strategic 'mistake' so much as black and white wrong.

We should go over a few facts:
-Virtual Safety Car was the primary procedure, which was highlighted for about 15 seconds.
-Then a switch goes to an actual Safety Car procedure
-Hamilton decided with the team together to pit. In the past he has pointed to the team when a strategic call was bad or wrong, or atleast asked questions about it. I believe he even did so in Malaysia. This time he did not, which indicates very much he had a big part in the decision, albeit of course feeded with information from the team.

I think it was a genuine believe from both Hamilton and the team that if Vettel pitted, they'd be under threat. Ultimately it proved wrong, and indeed history has repeated itself on Monaco. But I think given the small amount of time it was atleast understandable that the choice went to pitting.

It's the ghost of Monaco I suppose.

So far as we know, Lewis thought Nico and Vettel were pitting, because he saw a pit message on his screen and he couldn't see the guys behind. It was the duty of Mercedes to tell him that the pit crew was out, not for Nico (and of course, not for Vettel), but for him.

More than anything, the team has all the data that tell exactly where each car is on the track, they have all the computers to do the strategy simulations. Lewis doesn't, which can only be why he came in when he was asked to. This is the new age in which computers reign supreme.

Mercedes have too many pitting misadventures which points very firmly to something being wrong in their strategy department. Maybe its Paddy Lowe, maybe its the strategy guys at the factory.

[Jordan44]

If we take for a moment a breather, I'd like to point out that there are a few people here who actually used their head and didn't saw the strategic 'mistake' so much as black and white wrong.

We should go over a few facts:
-Virtual Safety Car was the primary procedure, which was highlighted for about 15 seconds.
-Then a switch goes to an actual Safety Car procedure
-Hamilton decided with the team together to pit. In the past he has pointed to the team when a strategic call was bad or wrong, or atleast asked questions about it. I believe he even did so in Malaysia. This time he did not, which indicates very much he had a big part in the decision, albeit of course feeded with information from the team.

I think it was a genuine believe from both Hamilton and the team that if Vettel pitted, they'd be under threat. Ultimately it proved wrong, and indeed history has repeated itself on Monaco. But I think given the small amount of time it was atleast understandable that the choice went to pitting.

It's the ghost of Monaco I suppose.

So far as we know, Lewis thought Nico and Vettel were pitting, because he saw a pit message on his screen and he couldn't see the guys behind. It was the duty of Mercedes to tell him that the pit crew was out, not for Nico (and of course, not for Vettel), but for him.

More than anything, the team has all the data that tell exactly where each car is on the track, they have all the computers to do the strategy simulations. Lewis doesn't, which can only be why he came in when he was asked to. This is the new age in which computers reign supreme.

Mercedes have too many pitting misadventures which points very firmly to something being wrong in their strategy department. Maybe its Paddy Lowe, maybe its the strategy guys at the factory.

I doubt it's Paddy Lowe. He is the technical guru. James Vowles is the man who does the strategy stuff and decides when to pit. But I agree with you. Mercedes don't know how to deal with safety cars, it's happened far too often.

[GrandAxe]

If Vettel and Nico had pitted, they would most likely have ended up behind both Kimi and Riciardo, so I don't see any permutation in which they could have been any sort of threat. The strategy call was just dumb.

[ChrisM40]

5 places for Verstappen is not enough. It's the same penalty Perez got for a mistake in defending with a broken car and with some Massa's involvement (he was too close). How is that similar? Here it was 100% one sided, high speed and dangerous move between barriers in Monaco. Grosjean got 10 places grid for less than that in 2012 here and Maldonado 10 places and drive-through for low speed collision in Bahrain '13. Are they waiting for injuries?

I'm a bit surprised by the amount of over the top apologies by Wolff. I don't recall anything similar directed at Rosberg after Silverstone, Canada, Singapore, Abu Dhabi or even Hungary where they lost a win. Weird, it's as if they are not treating drivers equally. It would be nice if those counting Mercedes blunders didn't forget the ones affecting Rosberg.

They probably saw in the telemetry that Grosjean was slow and braked earlier than expected, also he made a slight jink to the right. Ive said it before, but while Verstappen may have been at fault, the cause of the crash was at least partially Grosjeans doing.

[GrandAxe]

I doubt it's Paddy Lowe. He is the technical guru. James Vowles is the man who does the strategy stuff and decides when to pit. But I agree with you. Mercedes don't know how to deal with safety cars, it's happened far too often.

Ahh true! James Vowles title is "Chief Strategist."
Big title... Weird decisions.