George Russell missed out on the Belgian Grand Prix due to a lack of weight in his car. Lewis HamiltonBut that should not take away from the brilliance of his strategy and driving.
Russell’s bold decision and the pit wall’s unlikely one-stop opt opened the door to turning a battle for fifth place into victory.
The win also left team-mate Hamilton a little annoyed after the race, as he suggested he had not been offered a one-stop route.
Speaking to the F1 cameras straight after the race, Hamilton said: “I had the tyres in every stint but the team pulled me through…”
Elaborating further in his official press conference, Hamilton said he would have been happy to continue changing tyres between each stint, but that the team would intervene each time.
“I mean, if you’re listening. [to the radio]Most of the time, you could have heard what I said to the team,” he said.
“But I think the tyres were pretty good. I still had plenty of tyres and I had good speed. I didn’t want to stop.”
Hamilton’s tone suggested that the situation was not entirely equal between the two drivers, and that he did not have the strategic options available to his teammate to beat him.
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo: Andy Horn / Motorsport Images
But from Mercedes’ perspective, both drivers’ strategies worked because they were in slightly different situations, and the one-stop option only opened up for Russell because he was further down the order and had less to lose.
Russell was running fifth before his first pit stop and as the frontrunners all switched to hard tyres it looked like he would finish fifth if he did what everyone else did for the rest of the race.
With so little difference in pace between the cars it was nearly impossible to move up the ranks.
However, degradation of the hard tyres was minimal and he built up a two-second lead. Max Verstappen As the second pit stop approached, a discussion began behind him about whether he should pit again.
“It was a lot of back and forth over the course of three laps,” Russell said. “I think it’s difficult because when you have a gut feeling, you have to go with it.”
“But as the drivers and teams all pitted and were trying to switch to a different strategy, the data we had on Friday showed that a one-stop was nowhere near being viable, and I did have a few moments of doubt and thought, ‘Am I missing something?’
“Why isn’t anyone doing this? But I felt like I was one with the tires, I got a little bit off at the start and I knew I’d get some money back at the end.”
Eventually, as the other drivers pitted for their second and final pit stop, Russell found himself out front and the battle for the chequered flag was on.
However, from Hamilton’s perspective, the race unfolded differently as he led early on and faced a bigger threat from behind.
Charles Leclerc In the first stage of the race, he was well within the undercut range, Oscar Piastri Progress was being made, and Mercedes When the second stop came, McLaren Paid the price Lando Norris He made a long drive early on, ceded track position and got trapped behind a slower car.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff later explained that Hamilton may have felt good on his tyres at the end of each stint, but his decisions to pit were to maintain track position against the increasingly close Leclerc and Piastri.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo: Andy Horn / Motorsport Images
Wolff said: “As drivers we were saying the tyres were good so we don’t know the full picture, but at that stage nobody had a one-stop in mind. We had to cover the cars behind us, I think that was Piastri and Leclerc, and then you can see that everyone else logically opted for two stops.”
“That was unexpected. So what we did with Lewis was absolutely the right thing. But in the end, George is what kept them alive.”
“It was something we couldn’t have predicted. If we had predicted it, any other top team would have done the same thing.”
When Mercedes split their strategies, the data showed Russell could finish between first and fifth, so it wasn’t necessarily the best solution.
Perhaps there was also an element of surprise in how difficult the dirty air made it for Hamilton to overtake his team-mate at the end.
There’s also the added factor Mercedes later revealed that if Piastri had been closer at the end and looked like a real threat to win, they probably would have stepped in and pulled Russell aside.
When asked if he was tempted to order a position swap, Wolff replied, “It wasn’t a team order, but if we had been able to do one more lap we might have considered it. We would have retained first place and George would have finished third. But I’m glad we didn’t have to make that decision.”
But looking back at how things ultimately turned out for Hamilton, it’s likely he won’t forget now that if it was confirmed that Russell’s one unexpected pit stop accelerated wear on the car, which led to a crucial weight saving, he could have avoided a much worse outcome by sticking to his original strategic plan, even if it was a bit frustrating at the time.
