NAPI10 wrote: ↑25 Sep 2019, 16:17
sprint car76 wrote: ↑23 Sep 2019, 19:12
Someone explain to me how the pit strategy for stroll in this race made any sense. Why would you wait to pit him when you knew the real leaders "vettel +" were closing in on him. While he was fighting to keep them behind them he lost a ton of time and any chance of a points finish. When your racing with the mid pack these small errors become hugh in the final finish.Logic and plain common sense says pit him when vettel caught him to not lose any time. Baffles me sometimes the strategy they have for both drivers. While they have all this technology to help form their strategy most times it's like they are flying by the seat of their pants.
I am guessing, RP was hoping for a safety car at that point which would have been a free pit stop for Stroll. I dont see any other explanation.
That but I think people keep mistaking the position Gio/Stroll were in for how actually far ahead of those others guys they were. Just before Hamilton pitted Stroll was 20 seconds behind him, Magnussen was 41 seconds behind and Kimi 44 seconds behind. That meant that even if Stroll pitted at that point, he comes out in 14th, at a track with essentially not much passing though potentially with decent tires.
There are two options, he pits early, comes out way down and maybe makes up a position if lucky or he pits as late as possible and maybe has the tires to pass multiple cars if everyone else's fall apart or last option, safety car comes out and his 26 second pit time loss becomes maybe 15 and suddenly he's in the points.
This held for Gio, Stroll and Gasly. Gasly was helped out by the late safety cars and shenanigans and making up positions while Stroll had issues.
Just because Stroll/Gio were leading or upfront doesn't mean they were anywhere near a good situation if they pit. They were miles back and pitting to 14th wasn't going to help them. Keeping them out long and actually waiting for some leaders to pass non backmarkers was actually about the best chance of a safety car as well so for instance of Vettel tags Gasly going through then Stroll maybe finishes in 8th or something.
Originally he was running 14th till Kvyat's tires seemed to go off a cliff really early and then one of the Haas's got out of the way, then he's 12th and gets to 5th because he hadn't pitted. His only real shot at points was mass of failures late on or staying out and hoping to jump people via safety car pitstop. Lots of people messed up strategy here and all season but Gio and Stroll staying out wasn't a mistake, it was pretty much no points for them or a risky going for SC strategy for both.
