Wait what? People were saying he should have tried the undercut in Spa, who exactly?Midi wrote: ↑09 Sep 2019, 12:59Ironically, I do think Hamilton would have had a better chance of winning had he tried Bottas' strategy with fresher tires at the end whereas most people said after Spa that they should have tried the undercut. Apart from the hard racing / legal defensive driving discussion I do find it positive that there are still races this year that even Mercedes needs to be 100% perfect to win which was not the case in Spa and Monza. For the rest off the season (bar Mexico perhaps) the program will return to normal I'm afraid.
He was again fast at the end and was only a couple of laps from having a real shot at getting Leclerc in Spa, if he'd waited another couple of laps to pit maybe as well he could push the tires even harder while losing very little time on the old tires.
More over had he actually managed the undercut and come out ahead, it would instead be Leclerc who could hang out the first stint, go longer and have the faster tires at the end. The difference is he'd have come out quite close to Hamilton and had that Ferrari straight line speed advantage. The undercut is of zero use to Merc when it's Ferrari who have the straight line speed advantage at Ferrari's strongest tracks with long straight sections in a race. For Merc to win these races they need to go long and have the tires going to the end of the race. But fundamentally going longer in the first stint and having better tires in the second stint has worked at almost every track so far, it's worked so well so often that it's still baffling when anyone pits early thinking it's some awesome strategy.
The tires don't lose a lot of pace per lap, but they get thermally limited for lasting meaning the less laps you do the faster you'll be.
So if you start on lets say 1:20 laps and go to lap 12, or lap 25, you'll be doing roughly 1:20's right through. If you pit on lap 12 you'll end up doing 1:19's for the rest of the race, call it 35 laps, if you pit on lap 25, you'll do 1:18s for 22 laps. So you lose 1 second a lap for 13 laps, to gain 1 second a lap for 22 laps. It's a no brainer.
Vettel in Spa his times didn't drop off towards the end of the stint, he was doing about the same times start to finish, but when Leclerc/Ham pit later they ended up going around a second a lap faster due to length of stint and load on tires/temps as they start basically establishing the pace possible. Vettel was a second a lap faster in the final 10 laps for the same reason.
I was mystified that they pit Ham so early in Monza. Bottas was fundamentally slower, but wasn't losing a lot of time in those 8 laps longer he was out and it was easily made up later. Ham pitting 8 laps later would have quite easily won.
The really stupid thing is what they had was Bottas who they could pit first, completely safe in gap to those behind and use him and the threat of the undercut to force Leclerc to pit, then let Ham go long and then Ham come through at the end like Bottas except with a smaller gap to make up and a fundamentally higher pace.
The whole advantage of having 2 cars in the fight would be to utilise one to bait Ferrari into the wrong strategy but they used the faster driver with the best chance to win to do it rather than Bottas. Massive strategy flaw from Mercedes and imo, cost them a relatively easy win.
Doesn't happen often. Bottas def looked less of a wingman than usual but couldn't change the narrative. 
Perhaps the black&white flag will soon be shelved again.
