Phil wrote:I thought so too, but you have to consider thatnotsofast wrote:2. At Monaco, HAM was in the lead and pitted first. Normally, whoever pits first gets an advantage because of the undercut. I heard no announcements beforehand that an overcut would be better at Monaco. So, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me for HAM to stay in the lead ahead of RIC, regardless of RIC's pitstop situation.
1.) the track was wet and drying and at the time, slicks were a calculated risk
2.) the track was also cold, hence very difficult to bring those slicks up to the temperature working range
This led to the case that Ricciardo on his intermediates was quicker on the lap he stayed out longer than Hamilton was the lap he came out on slicks. In fact, Ricciardo was probably slower on his first lap on slicks too (relative to the lap before on his intermediates), but because track position is key in Monaco, he couldn't afford to stay out too long.
The other option would have been to pit earlier, but again, given the slicks had to be turned on, pitting first would have meant he would have stayed behind as well.
Under dry track conditions (with hot surface temperatures), it's the other way around - fresher tire yields quicker time, hence undercut gains you time, not loses. Monaco is somewhat atypical circuit - track position is everything and it's also very bumpy street circuit where other factors apply.
The inlaps of three good drivers to compare, Perez 109 on inters, Hamilton 112 on wets(2 laps after Perez) and Ricciardo a 116 another lap later. That means with a 10 second pitstop delay for Ricciardo his in lap was 106 or so, a few seconds faster than Perez makes a fair amount of sense, the FI isn't very fast. That also means that Hamilton's outlap was extremely slow. Now you could say this was slicks having trouble speeding up but you'd be wrong, it was only the ultras that had trouble.
Ricciardo's outlap was 93, I think Perez's outlap was a 98 or something, I forget it before closing the window. Hamilton's was a 101, then a 90. The ultra's just didn't turn on, the track was massively faster on slicks straight out of the pit for every driver. the ultra's weren't working at least for the Mercs, every VSC the heat went out of the tires and they took again an extra lap or two to get up to the pace of the softs/supersofts which didn't drop temp enough under VSC to get out of the window so they never switched off.
The ultras were what could/should have been a disastrously stupid decision by Mercedes. Ignore the fact that colder slightly damp conditions would always mean a tire with a lower operating window was going to make more sense, ignore the safety margin of a soft/supersoft with 47 laps left and knowing you could finish on them without too much trouble... Rosberg had trouble switching on the wets and inters to the same pace as other drivers. Look at Ricciardo's inters inlap compared to any lap Rosberg did on Inters, Rosberg was gaining between 0-1 second a lap on Hamilton, Ricciardo took 6 freaking seconds out of him on his clear air in lap. Merc knew they were having tire heating issues making the ultra the worst choice for multiple different reasons.
Then the worst thing, track position, the key thing here for Hamilton was getting the track position then getting to the end of the race, that meant a good outlap, quick warm up of tires and on worry getting to the end, the ultra was the worst choice in every single way. Had Hamilton been on softs, he'd have done a 91-92 outlap and been 10 seconds ahead of Ricciardo after his delayed stop exactly where he should have been having been able to pit from infront of him.
Merc were saved from a disastrous decision by a horrible pitstop for Ricciardo.
EDIT:- to add to that, it really wasn't a risky choice either. Delaying the pits and waiting for slicks we expected Ham to probably be first to slicks, not only because he's great in such conditions but because his wets were old and he was pushing them like mad in drying conditions. But as it happened several drivers got onto slicks before him and were doing strong lap times straight out of the pits. Everyone switched to slicks within 2-3 laps of the first guys because they proved it was the right time, it wasn't a risk for Hamilton at all... except the decision to go to ultras, softs of supersofts was a risk free easy decision to make and Mercedes cocked that up and it should have cost them a win.
