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Lewis Hamilton has admitted confusion over his race strategy during the US Grand Prix, which saw him finish the race in third place. The Briton was hoping to secure his fifth world championship in Austin, but has been made to wait until at least next weekend in Mexico.
Hamilton pitted early on in the race when a virtual safety car was deployed. Mercedes called him into pits after telling him to do the opposite to Kimi Raikkonen, who was leading the race. Raikkonen and Ferrari opted to stay out, which saw Hamilton come into the pits.
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However, he was forced to take a second pit stop, while Raikkonen and Max Verstappen, who finished in first and second respectively, made it through the Grand Prix on a one-stop strategy.
Before he made his second stop, Raikkonen had closed the gap by over ten seconds, which put Hamilton twelve seconds behind when he made his stop. And post-race Hamilton expressed his puzzlement.
"We made it so hard for ourselves," Hamilton stated. "I'm not really quite sure how the strategy ended up like that. Twelve seconds was way too far to catch up. Naturally I thought we would be able to do better. It's a little bit of a surprise, but you can't always get it right."
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Replies (5)
Login to replyRindtchamp
Posts: 304
Maybe he was confused because Bottas "wingman" had to let him past twice in one race?
ajpennypacker
Posts: 2,475
This was Mercedes' worst race in some time. They literally threw away the race after having the upper hand. They could have pitted Lewis while he could still come out ahead of Max.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
The thing is: the thing they did make sense at the time. If I were doing my drinking game, I would have taken a shot, thinking Ferrari had made another strategic blunder by not pitting under the virtual safety car. It wasnt bad strategy, Ferrari and Red Bull just did it better. Also cool how Max lasted that long on the SS.
juju_hound
Posts: 180
Mercedes was unable to win today with their tyres degradation. I totally agree with their decision - it was sth they had to do when Lewis lost advantage to Kimi at the start.
Im just surprised how hard was it to overtake yesterday even using DRS.
I thought Seb will overtake Valterii in one second but it didnt happen.
KyalamiKid
Posts: 146
The strategy could have worked, but they should have called him in when he was still ahead of Verstappen... They waited too long IMHO