Once again, GPR-A is right on the money.
evered7 wrote:Hamilton's outlap was faster than the gap between him and Kimi. Not sure how Kimi could have jumped him by pitting the next lap. Some just see things they wish. Ferrari must hope that the engine upgrade must work as intended. Mercs are faster when it matters. Can't overtake with so little to choose from.
You're not seeing the big picture. No one is suggesting that Ferrari should have pitted Kimi right away. The overall point is that Hamilton optimum strategy would have been to go long on the SS, much longer than they did, to get maximum effectiveness on the US for the last stint. They ended up pitting him early because he was being held up by Kimi and couldn't find a way past. So they compromised his strategy early on to go for the undercut.
This then meant that within that one lap, Hamilton was virtually ahead of Kimi. Done deal. But not quite. Because Hamilton now was facing of having to go much longer than intended on the softer tire, where as Kimi was going to end up on the more durable and harder tire. Then another interesting thing happened: Hamilton was quicker than Kimi, but not substantially and he was also very vocal about not having a lot of rear stability ("too much front wing"). If they had pitted Kimi earlier or at that point, they could have put more pressure on Hamilton by keeping Kimi close. The longer the race would have gone on, the more pressure this would have meant for Hamilton because he was on the softer, less durable tire. Also, when Kimi was finally pitted for SS, he had very very good pace. He was doing fastest lap times at that point. So the argument falls flat that Kimi was just off the pace. He may have been on the first stint, but he had track position over Hamilton and by forcing Mercedes to compromise Lewis's strategy, they could have competed better for that 4th position with Kimis car.
Now, I perfectly get the logic behind keeping Kimi out. It made perfect sense for Ferrari to do that in light of the championship. The only point that IMO made it a stretch to beginn with, is that Bottas on his first stint demonstrated a very distinct performance advantage. I didn't think he'd be held up by Kimi long and that proved to be correct. I also mislike how they were playing mind games with Kimi about him racing Lewis. At that point, he was far off - a pit stop would have put him around 8 seconds behind. With every lap they were keeping him out, they were compromising Kimi's race more relative to Hamiltons.
In the end, I was surprised how close Vettel got to Bottas. Not sure what went on there and why Bottas didn't have the pace anymore, but I do find it a pity that Ferrari are so publicly asking more from Kimi, yet at the same time it seems that at every opportunity, they are willing to play him as a pawn in order to maximise their chances with Vettel. It is what it is.